Christopher Chantrill - Writer, conservative, government spending taxes debt deficit

Christopher Chantrill

Welcome!

WELCOME. I am Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill, writer and conservative. You can see my work at the following sites:

Road to the Middle Class contains the eponymous book and my daily blog. It investigates and celebrates the cultural artefacts that ordinary people appropriate as they struggle to adapt from country ways to the demands of life in the city. Start here.

An American Manifesto is the site for my book and blog. I am writing this book about "life after liberalism" and blogging about it as I go. All are invited to comment. Start here.

USgovernmentspending.com is a resource on government spending in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government expenditure in the United States from 1902 to the present. Spending data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

US Spending 101 is a “university” of government spending. It features several walks through the pages of the usgovernmentspending.com suite of websites. And the learning never stops. But it is not a real university, nor does it offer credits for courses completed. Start here.

USgovernmentrevenue.com is a resource on government taxes and receipts in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government taxes, charges, use fees, and business revenue in the United States from 1902 to the present. Revenue data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

UKpublicspending.co.uk is a resource on public spending in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public expenditure by central government, local authorities, and public corporations in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Spending data is sourced from UK government Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, the UK National Statistics “Blue Book,” and academic studies. Start here.

UKpublicrevenue.co.uk is a resource on public revenue in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public revenues by central government, and local authorities in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Revenue data is sourced from UK Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK National Statistics and academic studies. Start here.

American Thinker publishes my op-eds most weeks. Click here.

US Stuck on Stupid analyzes the perfect storm of political bungling in the years from 1929 to 1939 that plunged the American people into untold misery during the Great Depression. Start here.

US Presidential Elections tabulates the results of presidential elections going back to 1788. Start here.

US Midterm Elections tabulates the history of midterm elections for the US Senate and the US House of Representatives going back to 1790. You can sort the elections by year, by party strength, and by party gains and losses. Start here.

Biography

I AM CHRISTOPHER CHANTRILL, a member of the international capitalist conspiracy. Both my grandfathers owned and operated import/export businesses in the early twentieth century, one in St. Petersburg, Russia, where my father was born, and the other in Kobe, Japan, where my mother was born.

I was born in India and raised and educated in England. I immigrated to the United States in 1968 and worked for many years designing and implementing utility control systems and software in Seattle.

Soon after moving to Seattle, I instinctively revolted against the suffocating left-coast culture of the Soviet of Washington, and soon came to revere the four great Germans who helped inspire the Reagan revolution: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin. Since then I have broadened my appreciation of “The German Turn” that has transformed the world over the last 200 years.

I have written for Liberty, FrontPageMag.com, and The American Thinker. My book Road to the Middle Class celebrates the self-governing culture of the United States in which enthusiastic Christianity, education, mutual aid, and living under law have taught generations of immigrants to rise from indigence in the countryside to a life of competence and prosperity in the city. My book An American Manifesto: Life after Liberalism tries to imagine what America would look like after the end of left-wing politics and big government.

Disclaimer and Transparency

WE make no respresentation about the accuracy of the data presented in these websites. Nor does Christopher Chantrill represent himself to possess any formal qualifications to select, evaluate or present the information. Users are urged to check all data against the published data sources and to report any errors or inconsistencies.

The websites have no relationship with any government institution, or any other institution. They are supported solely by advertising and by the life, fortune, and sacred honor of Christopher Chantrill.

Daily Blogging

WE BLOG DAILY, Monday to Friday, chiefly on national US politics, religion, education, mutual aid, and law. We also look at our junior partners in the global Anglospheric hegemony, the British. It is hard to say why, but very often our blogging zeroes in like a laser on liberal hypocrisies, monopolies, and sinecures. Of course, we love our liberal friends to bits, but we do not take them quite as seriously as they do. If we get too pompous and serious, please get in touch and tell us to lighten up.

We love to get email from our readers. And you can follow on Twitter .

Enjoy.

LATEST BLOG

Gold Reacts to Trump Fed Nomination

President Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board today and:

Gold is off 9%
Silver is off 27%
Platinum is off 18%

Does that mean that inflation is off the table?

Not really. Because as long as the government is spending 40% of GDP and issuing debt the Fed is going to have to monetize that debt when the government gets in a jam.

And next time there is a credit crisis the Fed will print money to get out of the jam. For instance, right now the AI tech lords are borrowing money like mad to finance their server farms. But suppose that Grok takes over the world and all the other AI guys fail? What happens to the borrowers?

Last time we had a credit crisis, in 2008, the Fed didn’t just act as “lender of last resort” but actively injected money into the economy through “quantitative easing.” Kevin Warsh — who joined the Federal Reserve Board in 2006 — supported “QE” during the actual crisis in 2008 but was opposed to continuing use of QE in subsequent years.

I suspect that QE doesn’t make a blind bit of difference when it comes to economyic recovery. It’s just Keynesianism with a pretty face.

Now I happen to believe that I am the world’s foremost expert on national economics and debt and finance. I published my views in 2017 in a blog entry “Why Personal Debt is Different from Government Debt.” I wrote that the big problem in finance is that a lot of money that is borrowed should be equity.

What do I mean? Simply, that you should only borrow money when you know you will be able to service the loan, even if things go South. If you just hope that things will work out then the investor in your scheme should be an equity partner, not a creditor.

But first, the fundamentals of debt, from Walter Bagehot:

First, people with debt must be able to service their debt. Obviously, if people do not pay their interest then the whole credit system goes upside down.
Second, debt must be properly collateralized, so that it can be liquidated when a borrower fails to service the loan. This is a confidence issue.

Back in the day, before the glorious dawn of Fannie and Freddie, you could only get 50% mortgages, and you had to refinance after ten years. Do you see how that protects the lender?

Back in the 2000s the government was encouraging liar loans, which allows people to buy houses that can’t service the loan. And they pushed low-down loans, so that when there wa a crisis the value of the house would be below the value of the loan.

Good old government. Violated both of Bagehot’s rules of debt.

But there’s more. Take student debt. A student borrows money to get a college degree. Why? Because experts agree that a college graduate earns more money. But it’s not like real debt, which is collateralized so the lender can be reimbursed if the borrower can’t pay back the loan. Really, when the government loans money to a student it is making a bet that the student will be able to earn a larger income. There is a word for a bet like that: equity. You invest in a share in a company and if it prospers you make money. If it fails, you may lose everything. But them’s the rules with equity investment.

Same thing with low-down mortgages: they are risk propositions: that the borrower will keep their job, that the price of the house will not go down. So maybe it would be better for the bank to be an equity partner in the home rather than a creditor.

There’s another interesting thing about debt. The little guy always loses. If a little guy can’t pay his debt, he may lose everything. Same with government debt. If the government can’t pay its debt because it lost a war, the little guy loses everything.

I think that is a problem and I think that all the scholars and experts and finance wizards need to get together to do something about it.

Now, I don’t know what Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh will do. Whether he will help us reform the credit system to limit debt to low-risk propositions, or not. And whether he will avoid flooding the world with money after a credit crisis, or not.

But is sure is interesting that precious metals took a dive on the day that Presdent Trump nominated him to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

| perm | 01/30/26 11:52 pm ET | comments |

An Anthropologist Visits a Primitive Tribe

Liberals believe in politics, so they have to have an enemy. The enemy? That's you and me.

But I regard politics as rather beneath my dignity: a culture for educated lowlifes: not really out of the top drawer. Advanced, noble people like you and me don't have enemies. Because every human is human, as flawed as you and me.

But, experts and anthropologists agree, there are modern nations and then there are First Nations.

And to me liberals are a First Nation. Their primitive culture, their ingrained tribalism, their ignorance of modern philosophy is, to me, a fascinating anthropological research project. Why do our liberal friends cleave so tenaciouslly to their ancient tribal traditions and culture?

Socialism? Who would be so ignorant or primitive to imagine that it means “the warmth of collectivism” after the cold-blooded murder of 100 million humans under socialist regimes in the last century?

Then there is the administrative state and it's “knowledge problem” attested to by all the best experts. How primitive do you have to be not to know about Hayek and the “knowledge problem?”

And yet, I experience my life as that of an intrepid explorer hacking my way with a machete into the gentrified urban wilderness, stumbling on an previously unknown tribe that nobody ever heard of before. And I wonder: Where are the Margaret Meads? The Frank Boases? The Jane Goodalls? Given the startling lack of anthropological science about this curious tribe, you would think that every young academic in America would be breaking down the door of their faculty advisor to be the first to develop a comprehensive theory of First Nation Liberalism and its gods, its origin myth, its cultural traditions, its peculiar sexual practices and other unique peculiarities.

Imagine a TV documentary showing us the daily life of First Nation liberals in their ancestral gentrified urban tribal lands practicing their ancient tribal “protest” rites. What a ratings hit it would be! I wonder who should narrate it: Greg Gutfield? You can imagine the usefulness of carefully introducing the “Karen” culture to ordinary Americans previously ignorant of this important liberal subculture in the gentrified tribal lands.

You may wonder why I should come up with this scientific post today of all days. Let me just say that I was with a nice liberal recently and everything “they” said was straight liberal narrative. Just as a primitive tribe would present to an anthropologist stumbling upon an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon jungle.

Seriously, we do not waste a moment by investigating and deepening our understanding of our liberal friends. Because Sun Tzu:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Don’t tell your liberal friend about this. It’s just between you and me. Capisce?

But wait! I just said, up front, that we wise ones don’t believe in enemies…

| perm | 01/30/26 3:51 am ET | comments |

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US GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE

At usgovernmentspending.com we have assembled a record of government spending in the United States for the last century. You can view government spending, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

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US GOVERNMENT RECEIPTS

At usgovernmentrevenue.com we have assembled a record of government revenue in the United States for the last century. You can view government receipts, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that revenue. more>>

UK PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

At ukpublicspending.co.uk we have assembled a record of public spending in the United Kingdom for the last century. You can view British public spending, central government and local authority, for every year from 1983 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

ROAD TO THE MIDDLE CLASS

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king’s peace, the law of contract, and private property.

Road to the Middle Class: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

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AN AMERICAN MANIFESTO

With the failure of the welfare state, it is time to consider what comes next. In "An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism" I develop a narrative about where we are and where we should go to redeem the American experiment.

An American Manifesto: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

>>more>>