Free Republic

The U.S. Treasury Department has revised its estimates of the foreign ownership through the end of Fiscal Year 2012, which means that we can now finalize our picture of just who the major holders of the 16.027 trillion dollars of the outstanding U.S. government debt issued through 30 September 2012 are: Overall, U.S. entities own 66% of all debt issued by the U.S. federal government. Ranking the major U.S. entities from high to low, we find that: U.S. individuals and institutions, which includes regular Americans, banks, insurance companies and other government entities, own 30.5% of the nation's debt. The...

The Obama Administration has posted their last budget offer to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee have a different take on the President’s budget: Obama’s budget turns off the sequester, adds stimulus extension, $50 billion in transportation spending and universal pre-K (better known as government baby sitting centers). And by getting rid of the sequester ($1 trillion), they propose cuts in discretionary spending of $100 billion only. In addition, Obama’s budget plan, to be unveiled April 10th (the same day that North Korea is threatening to nuke us), would prohibit taxpayers from accumulating more...

Preparing For Inflationa​ry Times Economics / InflationMar 29, 2013 - 11:06 AM GMT By: Jeff Clark "All this money printing, massive debt, and reckless deficit spending – and we have 2% inflation? I'm beginning to believe that either the deflationists are right, or the Fed's interventions are working." – Anonymous Casey Research reader The CPI, in our view, does not accurately measure inflation, which accounts for some of the discrepancy our reader is pointing out. However, the proper definition of inflation is "an increase in the quantity of money," which we've had in spades. We've not experienced the concomitant increase...

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday that the nation’s current debt of $16.7 trillion is “not endangering” the country, adding that “some debt is not a bad idea” and that he and other congressional Democrats “don’t think there’s a problem.” … Conyers and other liberal Democrats spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference about their initiative to compel Congress to cancel the across-the-board budget cuts (sequester) of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which actually are reductions in the rate of increase in federal spending and amount to $44 billion for this...

If you are a regular reader of American Thinker, you already know that our nation's debt and deficit problems are unsustainable. We need to look no further than the European Union to understand the problems associated with welfare states run wild. The violence in Greece is a harbinger of things to come in the United States if we fail to take action to get our nation's fiscal house in order. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3. No nation can spend its way out of a debt and deficit problem. It is true, however, that a growing economy produces increases...

In his recent book, Fixing the Moral Deficit, Ron Sider argues that deficit spending by the federal government is one of the most important moral challenges that Americans have ever faced. I disagree with some of Sider’s proposed solutions, but he’s right. Every year, the federal government spends well over a trillion dollars more than it takes in. As a result, it has racked up seventeen trillion dollars in debt, most of it in the last decade. In seven years at current rates, the U.S. will need almost a fifth of the GDP from the rest of the world just...

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico. The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of...

Some members of Congress apparently don’t like to be reminded about how much debt the country continues to rack up. During a House Financial Services Committee hearing Tuesday on the budget, two Democrats complained after House Financial Services Committee chairman Jeb Hensarling instructed that two monitors in the hearing room display a real-time running national debt clock. California Rep. Maxine Waters and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison both issued complaints about the displays, according to video of the hearing. “Clearly it is a political prop designed to message ideologically,” Ellison said. Waters asked that the debt clock not be on display...

How big is the national debt? You’d think this would be an easy question. Surely we know how much the government owes. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The true national debt could be triple the conventional estimate, anywhere from $11 trillion to $31 trillion by my reckoning. The differences mostly reflect explicit and implicit “off-budget” federal loan guarantees. In another economic downturn, these could result in large losses that would be brought “on budget” and worsen already huge deficits. That’s the danger. My purpose is not to scare or sensationalize. It’s simply to illuminate the problem. Broadly conceived, the national...

Noted investor, free market advocate, and author Jim Rogers during an interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday said that Tuesday’s State of the Union address makes you wonder whether President Barack Obama is “delusional” or just a good liar. Our “debt is physically impossible to pay off,” Rogers said after Beck asked whether the country has passed the point of no return. “We are the largest debtor nation in the history of the world.” “If everybody paid 100 percent of their earnings as taxes, we still couldn’t pay it off,” he added. The famed investor then turned his attention to...

Today is Obama’s second swearing in, and despite what the Obama-adoring, Kool-Aid- drinking liberal mainstream media tells you, this is a day for sadness, not celebration. It's time to mourn for what Obama is doing to America....and even worse, for what he has planned for the next four years. The economy is in free-fall. Economists are suddenly all agreeing that Obama’s “solution” to the fiscal cliff—gigantic tax increases that are already taking big bites out of paychecks—will crater our projected economic growth for 2013. It’s bad out there, and getting worse every day. The fact is: We are in an...

Today, we're taking a preliminary look at just who owns all the debt issued by the U.S. federal government through 30 September 2012 - the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year. Our chart below visualizes what we found.The information presented in our chart above is preliminary, as the U.S. Treasury typically revises its foreign entity debt ownership data in March of each year. Overall, U.S. entities own just 65.8% of all debt issued by the U.S. federal government. Ranking the major U.S. entities from low to high, we find that: The U.S. government's military retirement fund owns 2.4%...

The Republican-led House Rules Committee late Monday approved a rule for a massive Hurricane Sandy relief package that shuts out most GOP proposals to pare back the size of the bill. The main bill provides $17 billion in relief, and an amendment made in order would add another $33.7 billion, for a total of $50.7 billion. Late last week, Republicans offered amendments that would trim the bill significantly, but few of those were made "in order" by the Rules Committee on Monday. For example, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) proposed amendments that would have slashed $22 billion from the total package,...

President Obama's latest news conference was further confirmation that his voracious appetite for spending was not satisfied but whetted by the fiscal cliff deal, which he views as an appetizer. We were told that the GOP achieved a coup in the fiscal cliff negotiations because they lured Obama into an agreement to lock in the Bush tax rates except for the highest-income earners. Never mind that Obama agreed to no spending cuts or entitlement reform after demanding a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction; they told us he'd be forced to address those matters in a couple of months in the...

This is a list of the gross National debt that countries have. National debt refers to the amount of total government debt a country has. This is also referred to as ‘public sector debt’.It is compiled using data from the IMF, Eurostat and CIA agencies.Note: National debt is different to ‘External debt‘ – External debt includes all the debts a country (both private and public sector) owe to foreigners.Note: You may see slightly different figures for government debt levels, depending how it is measured. For example, Gross US debt is 102.9% in 2011. Net US debt was 67.8%UK national...

The rout was complete, the retreat disorderly. President Obama got his tax hikes — naked of spending cuts — passed by the ostensibly Republican House of Representatives. After which, you might expect him to pivot to his self-proclaimed “principle” of fiscal “balance” by taking the lead on reducing spending. “Why,” asked The Post on the eve of the final fiscal-cliff agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?” Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for...

Congress continues to show that they view us as serfs and view your hard earned money as automatically belonging to them first…..you should just be happy that they allow you to keep some...

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 659 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined) H R 8 RECORDED VOTE 1-Jan-2013 10:57 PM QUESTION: On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendments BILL TITLE: To extend certain tax relief provisions enacted in 2001 and 2003, and to provide for expedited consideration of a bill providing for comprehensive tax reform, and for other purposes

The fiscal cliff isn't as scary as the looming deficit and debt crisis about to swamp the country All eyes have been on the clear and present danger of the fiscal cliff—understandably—but there's a sound in the mountain range that's even scarier than the cliff. It's the sound made by an avalanche, the trillions of dollars of debt that's heading our way, gathering speed and mass. For most people, it's out of earshot now, and that's the way our government prefers to play it in its financial statements. Liabilities are not set out there in accordance with the well-established norms...

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years. More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic...