That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the world.

Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was only 6 million dollars for the entire year.

In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.

That is not a good trend.

Have you ever noticed that it seems like half the stuff we sell in our stores says “Made in China” on it?

Well, that is because China is wiping the floor with us on the global economic stage.

Just look at how the overall U.S. trade deficit has exploded over the past few decades.  In the chart below, we see that the U.S. trade deficit really spiked when the price of oil reached unprecedented heights a few years ago.  Then it dropped during the recession when the price of oil fell like a rock.  But now the U.S. trade deficit is almost back to where it was before….

Today, the U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world is about 5 times larger than it was back in 1996.

That means that we are getting poorer as a nation at a rate that is 5 times faster than back in 1996.

All of that money that is going out of the country could be going to support jobs and businesses inside the United States.

But instead we have been losing jobs and businesses over the past decade at a rate that is absolutely amazing.

According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day closed down in the United States during 2010.

23 every single day!

That means less jobs for American workers.

Right now, there are approximately 6 million fewer jobs in America than there was back in December 2007.

Because there are not enough jobs, we now have millions of working age Americans that simply cannot take care of themselves.

But it isn’t just jobs that we are losing.

There are a whole host of other statistics that show that economic conditions in America continue to get worse and worse and worse.  An all-time record 46.5 million Americans are on food stamps and poverty continues to explode all over nation.

Instead of addressing the root causes of our problems, our leaders continue to support our false standard of living by borrowing gigantic piles of money.

In many instances, we go back to the very same people that we sent our money to and we beg them to borrow it back.

How stupid can we be?

Debt always makes you even poorer in the long run.

Take a look at how our budget deficits on the national level have absolutely exploded in recent years….

Anyone that tells you that America is in good shape financially is lying.

Just look at that chart.

Sadly, the truth is even worse than the chart shows.  For example, there never was a “surplus” under the Clinton administration.  The U.S. government simply stole money from Social Security and used a bunch of other accounting tricks to make things seem a lot better than they were.

And the U.S. government is still using all sorts of accounting tricks to hide the true size of the national debt.  If you doubt this, just read this article.

If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), the U.S. budget deficit would be far larger each year.

But it is not just the federal government that is drowning in debt.

All over the country right now, municipalities are going broke….

*Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has announced that it will be skipping debt payments.

*Stockton, California is on the verge of becoming the largest U.S. municipality to ever file for bankruptcy.

For years, our politicians borrowed immense amounts of money to make up for all of the wealth that we were bleeding as a nation.