It really is hard to find the words to describe the true horror of the national debt. The U.S. government has been on the greatest debt binge in all of human history, and a day of reckoning is coming that is going to be so painful that it is going to shock America to the core. We have lived so far above our means for so long that none of us really has any concept of what "normal" is like anymore. The United States has enjoyed the greatest party in the history of the world, but now this decades-old party is ending and the bills are coming due. It was Dick Cheney who famously said that "deficits don't matter". Well, try telling that to the nation of Greece right about now. The horror that Greece is just beginning to experience is a preview of what is going to happen to us as well. Only when it happens to us it is going to be so much worse, because when we go down we are going to bring the entire global financial system down with us.
What we have done to future generations is beyond sickening. Previous generations entrusted to us the greatest economic machine in the history of the world and we destroyed it. Now we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren an economic future that has been totally wiped out and a national debt of more than 14 trillion dollars that we expect them to repay.
In Washington D.C. these days, there is a lot of talk about the debt ceiling. But whatever the politicians do, it is not going to solve our debt problems. If the debt ceiling does not get raised, we move the financial pain into the present. World financial markets would crash and that would be followed by a devastating economic nightmare.
If we do raise the debt ceiling, that will "kick the can down the road" a little bit farther. However, world financial markets will still crash eventually and our eventual economic nightmare will be even worse.
Well, can't we just "inflate our way" out of debt?
No, unfortunately things are just not that easy. If we try to inflate our way out of debt, interest rates will likely rise just as quickly as inflation does, and that would be absolutely catastrophic.
Before interest rates even reached 20% we would hit a point where it would take every single dollar taken in by the federal government just to pay the interest on the national debt.
Meanwhile, rapidly rising inflation would devastate the value of all of your bank accounts and every other single financial asset that you own.
So no, inflating our way out of debt is not going to work.
At the moment, the U.S. federal government is able to borrow gigantic quantities of money at super low interest rates.
When that changes, all hell is going to be unleashed.
The following are 41 statistics about the national debt that are almost too crazy to believe....
1 - As of June 20th, the U.S. national debt was $14,344,524,186,068.19.
2 - 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was approximately 14 times smaller.
3 - It took from the presidency of George Washington to the presidency of Ronald Reagan for the U.S. government to accumulate one trillion dollars of debt.
4 - Since then, we have added more than 13 trillion dollars of additional debt.
5 - The United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
6 - If you divide up the national debt equally among all U.S. households, each one owes over $125,000.
7 - Mandatory federal spending is going to surpass total federal revenue for the first time ever in this fiscal year. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
8 - Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.
9 - The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law.
10 - During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
11 - The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.
12 - The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.
13 - The U.S. government borrows an average of about 168 million dollars every single hour.
14 - The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress, U.S. taxpayers are guaranteeing that debt. This is debt that is not even included in the $14.3 trillion national debt figure.
15 - Some experts estimate that the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government for programs such as Social Security and Medicare are in the neighborhood of 60 trillion dollars. Other experts claim that the total for federal government unfunded liabilities could be well over $100 trillion. But what almost everyone agrees on is that it is going to be virtually impossible to even come close to meeting all of those obligations.
16 - The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
17 - The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.
18 - The level of government waste in this country is absolutely mind blowing. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services has just announced a brand new $500 million program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that "can't sit still" in a kindergarten classroom.
19 - In the past, the U.S. government has spent $2.6 million dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and $400,000 dollars to pay researchers to cruise bars in Buenos Aires, Argentina to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior when drunk.
20 - The cost for the first week of airstrikes on Libya was 600 million dollars. Keep in mind that the leader of the opposition in Libya has admitted that his forces contain large numbers of the same "al-Qaeda fighters" that were shooting at American troops in Iraq. So we are going broke and we are helping al-Qaeda take power in Libya at the same time.
21 - Just one day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.
22 - In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
23 - 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.
24 - Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
25 - Back in 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 16 workers. Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
26 - U.S. households are now actually receiving more money from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
27 - Back in the 1950s, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2009, corporate taxes accounted for just 6.6 percent.
28 - The U.S. national debt has increased in size for 54 years in a row.
29 - If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion each and every year.
30 - According to a shocking U.S. government report, interest on the national debt and mandatory spending on entitlement programs will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.
31 - A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?” projects that U.S. government debt will rise to about 400 percent of GDP by the year 2050.
32 - The U.S. government spent over 413 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2010.
33 - Approximately one out of every four dollars that the U.S. government borrows goes to pay the interest on the national debt.
34 - It is now being projected that by the year 2021, interest payments on the national debt will amount to $1.1 trillion dollars a year.
35 - If interest rates move up even slightly, the interest on the national debt is going to be a whole lot worse. A recent article in the Huffington Post laid this out really well....
According to a recent note from the sage of Dallas based Hayman Capital, highly respected Kyle Bass, a move back to 5% (2006 levels) in short term interest rates will increase annual U.S. interest expense by almost $700 billion annually. This is against current U.S. government tax revenues of $2.228 trillion (CBO FY 2011 forecast).
36 - If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon.
37 - A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.
38 - If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
39 - If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
40 - If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
41 - If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
You might be depressed after reading all of those statistics about the national debt, but there is some good news.
If you would like to help address this problem, the federal government is actually taking online donations that will go towards paying off the national debt.
Try not to laugh.
The national debt is a problem that should have been handled 20 or 30 years ago.
But it wasn't.
So now what we have to look forward to is a very bleak future. Even if we totally scrapped our current monetary system and repudiated the debt, the transition would be "rocky" at best and we would not enjoy anything close to the standard of living that we are enjoying today.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians in Washington D.C. would never even dream of abandoning the current system. Most of them still totally believe in it.
But this current system is headed for an inevitable collapse. There is no way of getting around it.
Even most of our top politicians are now admitting that our current state of affairs is "unsustainable". They just don't have the guts to do anything about it.
A horrific economic collapse is coming.
It is going to change the world.
You better get ready.
May be, it’s the sweet opinion: we see the end of Imperia, the end is near.
Imagine for a minute, please, Obama says “Guys, I need help, we should deal with it, we need this offer”, and hear the answer “No, dear Barak, we are from different parties with you” – is it normal, how do you think?
And if it’s true, the group of fellows makes all world wait, just cause.
I’m sure, they’re not such idiots.
Just nobody wants to lose the scores in the further elections, neither Obama, nor Republicans. They’re staying against together like a cowboys on midday and waiting for a good moment.
This moment is near. Nobody wants to devaluate the dollar, but it’s just a moment when can be default of – that’s true.
I’m sure that Obama, we can believe in, and whole Government, are working for us and working on it.
I’m sure.
We elect career politicians who are motivated by their own self interest which is to be reelected.
In order to be reelected they make promises and give money and benefits to the people; this is not in the greatest interest of the country but that is not their concern….thus…if we do not have term limits and end politics as a career nothing will change. We can see where “experienced” politicians have gotten us.. their experience is totally limited to lying and being reelected not in governing…. we told them what we want and they gave it to us….THE END!!
National debt is so huge and so out of control that it can never be paid off. Best to have the government file a tax return for the first time and allow it to claim the whole national debt as a one time total loss.
Why do they always feel taking from the poor and giving to the rich is the answer to the problem. I feel they need to tax the rich and raise corp. taxes. If they only raise these taxes by 1/16th% for every million dollars the national debt would be gone in around 7 1/2 years.by raising credit card interest by 1 percent also would also increase revenue
US is buying abroad approximately 10M barrels of oil per day out of 19M it consumes. Given the price jump from $85 to $110 during two months after Libya attack, US was losing $250 million dollars a day. In a week $1.75B dollars, almost 3 times more then your $600M above.
Even today when prices still $95-100 /barrel US loses $100-150 M dollars per day.
Country of idiots.
Saudis and Russians told me say thank you.
Illegals come here and get free medical care and college. Politicians spend huge amounts of money on campaining. Banks give their CEO’s huge bonuses, etc., etc., etc. Huge dollars are spent on climate change “caused by humans.” A volcano burps 3 times in iceland that lets out enough Co2 that every penny we’ve spent on recycling for the last 20 years was for nothing. The government needs a total overhaul.
You want to down pay the national debt, follow the direction’s ToTO; United States Code TITLE 12 > CHAPTER 3 > SUBCHAPTER XII >§ 411. Issuance to reserve banks; nature of obligation; redemption
Federal reserve notes, to be issued at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of making advances to Federal reserve banks through the Federal reserve agents as hereinafter set forth and for no other purpose, are authorized. The said notes shall be obligations of the United States and shall be receivable by all national and member banks and Federal reserve banks and for all taxes, customs, and other public dues. They shall be redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States, in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, or at any Federal Reserve bank
Citizens WOULD support a law to drug test govt aid recepients. Most people say if we have to pass a drug test in order to work, they should certainly have to pass one to get assistance. For housing, food stamps, medicaid, SSDI and unemployment! This would at least stop the flow of those benefits that are being cashed in for illegal activities.
This “taxing the rich” stuff is nuts. Who are the “rich” anyway? Everybody seems to have a different definition. Is it those making over $250,000 a year, those with net worth of over $1,000,000 or simply someone making more or having more than the writer??
People making over $250,000 a year are already paying well over half the taxes and they are only 5% of the taxpayers.
Over 40% of the households in the U.S. pay no taxes.
How about a system where everybody who earns above the poverty level pays some income tax, say $100 minimum. Then a scaled increase so that someone making above $100,000 pays a minimum of $10,000 and the $1,000,000 earner is paying $100,000 minimum regardless of any deductions. Then we have almost 90% of Americans with some “skin in the game”.
So much for raising new taxes. How about we than restrict spending? Politicians have proved over and over for decades now that they will not only spend every dime raised thru taxes but will spend mor and more by printing money and running up our debt (now $14 trillion). How about just “no more debt” just balance the budget?.
I humbly invite anyone to a public debate in Lake City, Florida concerning the following letter to the Editor. in 8/13/11 Lake City Reporter, page 4A.* Title: Abortion and the national debt* To the Editor: Since April 2010, when I put an ad in a Sunday edition of the Lake City Reporter I have written that there is a correlation between legal abortion nationally and national debt. Let me make it into a hypothesis: “Abolish abortion of inhabitants of the womb nationally or suffer national bankruptcy.” Proverbs 14:34. Research the Bible and see if there are verses that say there is a correlation between national sin, like the sin of murder of inhabitants of the womb via abortion, and national judgment, such as national bankruptcy. Kenny Merriken Lake City
Enough is enough. Stop funding for wars on wrong notions and precedents.
[...] level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending. For example, did you know that the U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute? All of this debt has fueled an [...]
We are all at fault!!!!!! We are slowly going to disintegrate as a nation. Love life while it lasts…..
[...] is what I mean – if we don’t deal with our national debt now, everyone agrees that a massive day of reckoning is coming down the road. Greece is an [...]
[...] is what I mean – if we don’t deal with our national debt now, everyone agrees that a massive day of reckoning is coming down the road. Greece is an [...]
[...] is what I mean – if we don’t deal with our national debt now, everyone agrees that a massive day of reckoning is coming down the road. Greece is an [...]
What I really dont understand is…Why Are the American citizens getting the Short end of the stick, where as the people(politicians, ruling class elites) are Living Prosperous in a problem that they themselves caused and created? I think it’s still enough time to realize, who or what the true problem is and why they are doing it…nothing further from the truth, I think we all can come to the common sense conclusion and Agree that “We”(The middle class Americans currently the 99%) Are getting played for some fools.
Well i see a problem the economy is horrible we are in A big hole with other nations and we just need to find a way to balance the budget and stop being babys about the subject and do whatever it takes too get out of this national debt because if we dont stop the united states as we know will be gone for along time
We must balance our budget now. FIRST, immediately, cut out excessive government spending, bring our troops home, reduce all foreign grants and payments, make every government expenditure public. SECOND, limit. Federal expenditures to 18 percent of GNP moving towards a balance budget. THIRD, Congress must pass a Budget for the subsequent
fiscal year within two months of the end of the current fiscal yea or receive no pay or benefits of their position, FOURTH, make no federal or state payments to any illegal resident of this country, FIFTH, consume USA produced petroleum products only. Environmental limits to be reduced to only immediately essential for survival, SIX, reduce subsistence payments to those necessary for immediate survival only. Healthy people work. Care for the sick. SIXTH, Congress will pass no bill benefiting members of Congress without the informed consent of the governed. All current programs for the benefit of Congress members to be specificly authorized by the consent of the governed. Congress will receive no waiver to entitlements that are directly available to the governed. SEVENTH, politicians who lie are to be first sanctioned by Congress and fined $100,000 for the first event. Upon a second event of lying, the member of Congress is to be fined $500,000 or resign the position. A third event of lying will result in removal from office and forfeture
[...] U.S. national debt is completely and totally out of control. Right now it is sitting at $15,046,397,725,405.16. [...]
this country is finished, it has been since the day welfare and corporate intrest wars(Middle eastern wars) became acceptable ways of life in this ghost of a nation. The American dream is real alright, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Another way to envision our national debt: Imagine a ten-ton dump-truck slightly over-loaded with 11 tons of $100-dollar bills. Now imagine a line of those loaded dump-trucks, (200 to the mile), SEVENTY-FIVE miles long….that’s our national debt!
chase kirby is a sexy beast
the black hole will kill use all
How about if we get all of the politicians to stop with the insurance programs they have and get what we have, stop getting their high pay for doing nothing, and when they retire they get social security like we the tax payers get. All of them, no mater if they are Republican or Demarcate, just want to go out and tell us what we want to hear just to get re-elected, bash the other parity, and say see how great we are? At one time as far as I can remember, when they ran for election, they would bash each other a little, get elected, then work together for the betterment of ALL OF US. Now it seems that all they want to do is what is best for them,and the business and rich people that got them re-elected. If any of them are serious about their job, have them learn to work together for for all of us like they were elected to do. Maybe if we fire ALL OF THEM, and get a NEW start with honest people, we can bring this great country back again. May God help us all.
[...] #27 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. But this year alone the U.S. government is going to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt. [...]
It will never be paid off as long as our government is out for themselves. Democrats vote for debt and then Republicans vote for debt. Everytime they raise the debt ceiling they are voting for more debt. Here is a tough idea, BALANCE THE BUDGET. No more loans , operate within our means, have a sustainable energy policy, End entitlement programs that have the least impact first and then scale back the bigger ones. PASS A BALANCED BUDGET AMMENDMENT that is tied to the politicians future. Our own future depends on it.
There IS a way out of the debt crisis that we are in right now, and at the same time end unemployment and the homeless in America, it’s just a matter of procedure. Quit being fixated on the problems and look to the obvious answer. I won’t mention it in this, I don’t need the problems it would invite
[...] is why I have written over and over about the U.S. national debt and about how the U.S. government is spending too much [...]
It looks like some people still think this debt is going to be paid off. Of course it isn’t. It isn’t possible. It would be like me owing $3B. Yeah, I would owe it, but would I pay it back? Could I pay it back?
It would take me longer than the US paying back the $15T back at $150B a year (100years-at 0% interest.) That works out to $410M per day. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.
You know; maybe Obama and his dems are really smart. Since the debt isn’t going to be paid back, why not run it up? As long as there are fools who will lend you the money, just take it. Defauly on $15T or $30T or $50T. What’s the difference?
You can not SPEND your way OUT of debt! No matter how they like to dress it up, it will never happen.
There is so much misinformation, and this is down to the strange-hold on mass media.
If truthful. unbiased information would reach the masses, things would be different.
Unfortunately, it seems the masses don’t want to spend the time researching online, and will wait in their armchairs until we spoon feed it to them!
Hello guys,this problem is just horrible i live in holland en the ipod touch is nog here jet.i was wondering if the shipment to holland also have bad displays, do you have any idea ??because when you buy a device of 400,- you just expect it to work properly!
I’ve read some pretty interesting propositions here. I think the government should start listening to the peoples’ ideas on how to solve the crisis. Why not set up a website where americans contribute their ideas and the government attempt the plausible suggestions. I mean after all it is a democracy and we are the ones who will suffer. It’s so impossible to get an audience with elected officials much less would they even consider pushing forward with such ideas because essentially they are sitting in the corner sucking their thumbs waiting for doomsday like the majority of the country. All while the other portion of the population is just plain ignorant to what is happening. As a mother it is very saddening to know what is to come for my daughters future and i know as an American I would love to follow other Americans in their pursuit to save the economy. I mean any attempt is better than none at all and obviously what ever the government is doing is not working.
Unfortunately the only way Congress will listen to what we have to say is after we vote them out of office. The present Congress is protecting the rich and there is only one way to change it. We the people have the right to vote for elected officials we want to represent us.
Everyone says tax the rich, but this in itself will not produce enough money if there is still an Earned Income Credit (EIC) taking it away. The best thing would be a flat tax where everyone pays the same rate no matter what their income level. Get rid of 90% of IRS and no more giving low income families with numerous children thousands of dollars they never paid into the system.
we are very weird , we throw away alot of money except for re-using it instead of throwing it away we could make it pretty again and then use it for all this debt were in .
Capitalism has spun way out of control…..Big companies like Walmart,WALL STREET, Macdonalds, Costco, Banks, GM, Chrysler, BP, EXXON-MOBILE, SHELL make billions and billions of dollars every year……AT the expense of making each middleclass citizen go more in debt each year. The rich get bailed out everytime they cry “help me”……Middleclass with no house, no jobs, left crying “help me” are left abandoned!!Everything is outsourced out to China…..and then they wonder why the unemployment is 12pct? Make all the RICH pay for the DEBT, TAX them 25pct additional in taxes for the “DEBT REPAYMENT FUND”. A revolution is coming soon, The RICH have killed this Country. Every working American will have to stop working for these companies to end this debt cycle!!