Free Republic

Since Boehner and Ryan took over the finances of the federal government we have seen the national debt keep growing. It's now 19.188 trillion. How will we pay this and the exponentially growing interest? The taxpayers are tapped out. The disciples of Bernie are wanting to burn even more dough. But it will be years before the Treasury will bring in enough revenue to cover the already accumulated deficit and interest obligations before it can spend another penny except through more borrowing.

<p>Reminds me of something Mike Murphy said about Trump in the aftermath of Jeb’s collapse. The logic in favor of nominating another Bush was always, er, complicated, but the logic against nominating a loose cannon is straightforward.</p> <p>I’ll bet even Murphy didn’t think Trump would advertise the possibility that America’s creditors might not receive payment in full in a Trump administration. Choose your own preferred term for what he’s recommending here — renegotiation, bankruptcy, default.</p>

One day after assuring Americans he is not running for president “to make things unstable for the country,” the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, said in a television interview Thursday that he might seek to reduce the national debt by persuading creditors to accept something less than full payment. Asked whether the United States needed to pay its debts in full, or whether he could negotiate a partial repayment, Mr. Trump told the cable network CNBC, “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” He added, “And if the economy was good, it...

In the six months that have passed since then-retiring House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a budget deal with President Barack Obama that suspended the legal limit on the federal debt until March 15, 2017, the federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion. The Senate passed “The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015” with a vote held in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 30. Obama signed it on Monday, Nov. 2. At the close business on Oct. 30, 2015, the total federal debt was $18,152,981,685,747.52. By the close of business on April...

Atlantic City has so little money left that it could miss a $1.8 million bond payment due Sunday, a step that would make it the first New Jersey municipality to default on debt since the Great Depression. The Jersey Shore gambling destination has endured years of strain as a third of its casinos shut down. But now its cash levels are low enough that bankruptcy is a possibility for the 39,000-population city, according to Mayor Don Guardian.

"...Icahn, who Trump had previously suggested could serve as his Treasury secretary, warned that markets will have a "day of reckoning" without fiscal stimulus, and argued that the U.S. government "certainly could do more spending." "The Republican Party that I used to be more sympathetic with — I'm right in the middle now, although as you know I'm for Trump — but what I would say is Congress is in this massive gridlock," he said, explaining that the Republican-controlled body is "obsessed with this deficit to a point that I think it's almost pathological..." "

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected a whopping $500 billion loss in revenue for the Gulf nations in 2016, which is 30 percent more than the $390 billion lost in 2015. The massive shortfall has crippled the gulf economies, which are facing record budget deficits and seeking external funding to overcome it. Many experts believe that $100 per barrel oil prices are history, and we might not revisit those prices for more than a decade. It implies that the recent crisis will not end as quickly as the downturn in 2007-2009. The oil-dependent nations will have to figure out...

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia, crimped by low crude prices, approved Monday a long-term blueprint for the kingdom’s economic transformation aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. The multiyear plan, dubbed “Saudi Vision 2030,” was approved by the cabinet, according to Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the government’s economic council would be in charge of overseeing the vision’s implementation. Saudi officials later Monday were to present a broad overview of the country’s most extensive economic shake-up in decades. The steep drop in oil prices has given new urgency to...

Since this is an election year, you’re hearing a lot about the size of the national debt — and the financial imperative to expunge it before it gets passed on to our kids and grandkids. Donald Trump ... ...suggested earlier that it would be possible to pay off the entire national debt in about eight years... ...the only way to advance the debate is to get past the myths... #1) The federal government’s books are not like a family’s finances ...put yourself in the position of the government. Say you earn the typical American family income, and you spend and...

Total U.S. student debt now topples credit card debt, surpassing the $1 trillion threshold in 2012. Each year a new class of students graduates from college; however, many of those graduates do not find jobs that can adequately allow them to pay back the hefty loans. (For related reading, see: Student Debt Passes $1 Trillion: Is College Worth the Investment?) A new report by the Education Department highlights the student debt epidemic. Not only is more than $200 billion in student debt owed to the federal government, several borrowers are woefully behind on making payments. The recent statement from the...

...In his Poor Richard's Almanac, May 1757, Ben Franklin wrote: "Work as if you were to live 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow." Benjamin Franklin cited the Spanish Empire's downfall in The Way to Wealth, 1758: "If you would be wealthy, says he...think of saving as well as of getting: the Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than her incomes." Franklin expounded the dangers of debt in The Way to Wealth, 1758: "God gives all things to industry. Then plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell...

It’s not just the chickens that have come home to roost in Puerto Rico. It’s the hacks as well. The whole thing can be summed up in two words – Hack City. There were the public-sector union hacks whose contracts drove the Commonwealth into what is now estimated at $72 billion in debt. There were the government officials who encouraged this profligacy with indulgent hiring. There are the hacks in Washington who just want to send a big check and forget the whole thing, rather than insist on the reforms that put Puerto Rico in these straits in the first...

The Obama administration plans to forgive $7.7 billion in federal student loans held by nearly 400,000 permanently disabled Americans. By law, anyone with a severe disability is eligible to have the government discharge their federal student loans. The administration took steps four years ago to make the process easier by letting people who are totally and permanently disabled use their Social Security designation to apply for a discharge, but few took advantage.

Congress is expected to begin consideration of federal legislation to grant Puerto Rico extraordinary powers to escape a looming debt crisis. The island territory, home to just 3 million people, is faced with a massive $70 billion debt burden. During negotiations of the omnibus budget deal at the end of 2015, House Republican Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) promised House Democrat Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that Congress would consider legislation to grant the Island with bankruptcy protection from its debts. The tentative deadline to begin action was March 31.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) brushed off fears that a runaway national debt could pose a threat to America. "Look, a debt of whatever amount merely records resources that have already been acquired by the government," Markey argued. "The government has already gotten and spent that money for the benefit of America. Whether it ever pays this money back is basically irrelevant." "Let's imagine that, 'horror of horrors,' the government defaults on this debt," Markey continued. "Who's hurt? The people who lent the money to the government by buying bonds can obviously afford to lose this money. People who need their...

The US public pension system has developed a $3.4tn funding hole that will pile pressure on cities and states to cut spending or raise taxes to avoid Detroit-style bankruptcies. According to academic research shared exclusively with FTfm, the collective funding shortfall of US public pension funds is three times larger than official figures showed, and is getting bigger. Devin Nunes, a US Republican congressman, said: “It has been clear for years that many cities and states are critically underfunding their pension programmes and hiding the fiscal holes with accounting tricks.” Mr Nunes, who put forward a bill to the House...

Does anybody believe this is possible?

An auditor for the Government Accountability Office told the Senate budget committee that in the next 15-25 years, the amount of public debt will exceed all the goods and services produced by the entire U.S. economy.  Without action on the debt, the auditor said the percent of debt to GDP could rise to 200% or 300%. Washington Free Beacon: Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office, testified at the Senate Budget Committee to provide the results of its audit on the government’s financial books. “We’re very heavily leveraged in debt,” Dodaro said. “The historical average post-World War II...

Over 40 percent of those in student loan programs have stopped making payments. Many borrowers have never made any payments.The department of education (a useless body that I would eliminate in one second if given the chance), cannot figure out why this is happening.“We obviously have not cracked that nut but we want to keep working on it,” said Ted Mitchell, the Education Department’s under secretary.The Wall Street Journal reports More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments. More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on...

As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said. "The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold." In a...