Posted on 08/16/2016 3:27:54 PM PDT by rustyboots
From the article; "By close of business on Aug. 12, it had increased again, hitting $14,012,909,909,536.53."
When I read this I just realized that when/if the government ever decides to (or it is forced to by "others"), the people of the United States will be the last one to get any sort of return on our money. If we get any return at all. Like the bond holders of the car companies, we will be placed last in the long line. Any financial recompense will be made to government pensions, government union pensions, and foreign debt holders. BOHICA America, it will coming soon to a neighborhood need you!!
I know. Even if we got debt relief from the countries we owe, we’d still be screwed.
What we are witnessing is government of the government, by the government, for the government.
May it perish from the earth.
Much, much more. He ran up the debt far more than that in his 8 years. And it is not happening linearly, and not just doubling every 4 years. Much of our GDP is spent servicing the debt interest payments, while the amount of the principle debt increases enormously every year. Pull any number out of thin air, like another 12 trillion in debt for a third term and it's likely to fall short. Things are going critical! With most of the GDP spent on debt service, there is little discretionary funding left, and the only thing left is more obscene debt creation to pay for the White House occupant wish list. You're right - great pain and violence is on the horizon.
Sociaism may work in Denmark & Iceland until the Muslims decide to invade and get on all the government welfare programs. That will be the end of it.
Debtors like the year of Jubilee, Lenders not so much.................
ALL of us are lenders to the government..........
It looks like the next President will have no business making any promises to spend money as all the receipts for the next 4 years are already earmarked for national debt servicing.
“I know it would cause a massive economic upset”
That’s putting it mildly and outlawing it likely wouldn’t have the impact that you want it to.
Public debt is a preferred investment by retirement funds and insurance companies, it gives them a reliable income. That would vanish.
When Alexander Hamilton took office as the first Secretary of the Treasury the United States was essentially bankrupt. It had inherited a massive debt from the Revolutionary war. Its currency, the Continental Dollar, was close to worthless. No one would loan the country money to keep it afloat. The future looked bleak.
But Alexander Hamilton was a genius and he knew it was possible to turn this crushing debt into an asset, a funded public debt. Hamilton promised to pay interest on this debt in gold. This made the previously near-worthless American debt extremely desirable. Investors bought up and bid up all of the debt that they could get, and it also had the effect of making near worthless US dollars valuable. Hamilton’s insight is what kept the United States from economic collapse and falling apart before it could get started.
The size of the debt isn’t as significant as the percentage of GDP needed to cover debt service, meaning whether or not the interest payments are manageable. Despite the debt sitting at a record 18 trillion debt service is on the low end. In 2014 it was 8% of tax revenues. In 1995 it was 17% for comparison. Now a lot of this is due to the extremely low interest rates of recent years so that will change when rates increase, but it shouldn’t take the numbers out of their historic range.
In the early years of the country we had a sinking fund for the purpose of retiring the national debt. The national debt was paid off for its one and only time in 1835 during the Jackson Administration, and if I recall the history correctly it was immediately followed by a depression. Paying off the debt may have had the effect of contracting the money supply. Anyway, it didn’t have the effect of sudden prosperity.
A more worrisome issue to me is the chronic erosion of the value of the dollar, and IMO this directly related to Nixon breaking its last link to gold. Even the weak gold standard of that time put some brake on Congress constantly increasing the debt limit, which is the hidden source of the devaluation of the dollar.
It’s more like the total amount of money that has been created.
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