Thursday, September 18, 2014

The U.S. National Debt Has Grown By More Than A Trillion Dollars In The Last 12 Months

It is going to get really ugly at some point. Interest rates will soar and Fed money printing could eventually push price inflation well beyond 5%. The Fed "target" inflation of 2% is a joke. It will explode past that.-RW

Michael Snyder writes:
The idea that the Obama administration has the budget deficit under control is a complete and total lie.  According to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government has officially run a deficit of 589 billion dollars for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2014.  But this number is just for public consumption and it relies on accounting tricks which massively understate how much debt is actually being accumulated.  If you want to know what the real budget deficit is, all you have to do is go to a U.S. Treasury website which calculates the U.S. national debt to the penny.  On September 30th, 2013 the U.S. national debt was sitting at $16,738,183,526,697.32.  As I write this, the U.S. national debt is sitting at $17,742,108,970,073.37.  That means that the U.S. national debt has actually grown by more than a trillion dollars in less than 12 months.  We continue to wildly run up debt as if there is no tomorrow, and by doing so we are destroying the future of this nation...

Consider the following facts...

-The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 7 trillion dollars since Barack Obama has been in the White House.  By the time Obama's second term is over, we will have accumulated about as much new debt under his leadership than we did under all of the other U.S. presidents in all of U.S. history combined.

-The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first established in 1913.

-If the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

-Right now, the United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

-In August, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 2.028 percent.  In January 2000, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 6.620 percent.  If we got back to that level today, we would be paying well over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

-At this point the U.S. government has accumulated more than 200 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities that will need to be paid in future years.  In other words, we have made more than 200 trillion dollars worth of promises that we do not have money for yet.

7 comments:

  1. "Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

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    1. I am on page 219 of this 1300 plus work that was written from the mid-1940's to the mid-1960's, and first published in 1966. It is relevant for today, as demonstrates how various 'actors' in societies over the ages have sought power and control. So the old saying 'there is nothing new under the sun,' appears to apply today to nation-states the world over..

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  2. I largely agree with this post, except for the "we are destroying the future of this nation" part. But, what I love about libertarianism is it's consistency. Many of us are austrians economically. If we argue that debt creation can't create wealth, than we should agree it can't directly destroy it either. It can only transfer wealth and distort the economy, preventing the optimal configuration of wealth creation.

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    1. Debt creation can't create wealthy? If someone with a million dollars lends 100 people 10,000 dollars to buy cars which will get them to work, wealth is not created? Same amount of wealth in the economy as if the 100 sat home and the guy with a million put it under the mattress? Don't think so. The debt enables them to get to work to create wealth. On top of that 100 cars were sold.

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    2. Debt for consumption destroys future wealth while debt for investment creates it.

      Gov debt is all consumption.

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  3. Treasury Direct's "debt to the penny" website does not track the budget deficit. For example, for Q2 and Q3 2013, the national debt was essentially unchanged. Did the govt run a balanced budget during this time? No.

    04/02/2013 16,804,876,955,116.78
    10/02/2013 16,747,468,940,509.72

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