Free Republic

The financial position of the U.S. is not just troubled; it is artificially created to fool the people. The nation's budget deficit and debt are exponentially higher than what our politicians say they are. None of the headline figures used as the basis of public discourse have any relevance to the true state of U.S. finances. The government's financial reporting is misleading because our political leaders have subverted the democratic process to advance their personal interests. Adding all of the costs associated with the nation's social-insurance programs to the amounts reflected in the Financial Report shows that over the past...

Each U.S. taxpayer now has a federal-debt liability of $1.1 million, and rising. Remember that when President Obama boasts that the federal deficit—the shortfall between annual revenues and spending—is declining. Of course, the primary reason for the decline is the sequester, which was his idea but now adamantly opposes. The public tends to focus on the total national debt, which just passed the $17 trillion mark—up from $10.6 trillion when President Obama took office. But that figure pales in comparison to the federal government’s long term unfunded liabilities—money the government is obligated to pay over and above the revenues it...

We have all heard the news stories about people so morbidly obese that they could not exit their house or apartment. I remember one story of a person who had to be lifted out with a crane after a wall was removed. These people are addicted to eating, and in some cases, ate incessantly even though they knew that they were jeopardizing their health and eventually, their lives. They grew so large that they were barely able to move and rendered themselves largely useless except as a food-disposal unit. This reminds me of our federal government, which was once agile...

If Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling soon, the U.S. government won't be able to pay its debts. Here's who the government owes money to — all the holders of U.S. Treasury debt, broken down by category and by how much government debt they hold. Notes The graph includes debt owed to the Social Security trust fund and other federal funds. These are sometimes excluded when calculating the debt for other purposes. For details, see this GAO report. Source: Federal Reserve; FMS; GAO; Social Security Administration Credit: Quoctrung Bui For more, see our story: What A U.S. Default Would Mean...

Please note that the current debt limit is $16.699 trillion. Debt to the Penny Interestingly, the US Treasury website Debt to the Penny and Who Hold It shows the current public debt as 16,747,429,285,635.12 (the same as Nick shows in the above chart). Treasury Stops Updating National Debt You do not have to be a math genius to figure out that "debt to the penny" already exceeds the debt limit. I asked Nick about that and he replied ... Since mid-May, "debt to the penny" hasn't been rising. When they postponed raising the debt limit they stopped showing any increase...

<p>Full title: Who Is Going To Buy The US Debt If This War Causes China, Russia And The Rest Of The World To Turn On Us?</p> <p>Yesterday we implied a difficult question when we illustrated the huge size of US Treasury bond holdings that China and Russia have between them - accounting for 25% of all foreign held debt - implicitly funding US standards of living (along with the Federal Reserve). The difficult question is "Can the U.S. really afford to greatly anger the rest of the world when they are the ones that are paying our bills?" What is going to happen if China, Russia and many other large nations stop buying our debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt that they already own? If the United States is not very careful, it is going to pay a tremendous economic price for taking military action in Syria.</p>

The debt ceiling is a time bomb with a faulty timer: All of Washington sees it ticking toward default, but nobody knows exactly when it will explode. In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew projected that the department's "extraordinary measures" currently being taken to avoid default will be "exhausted in the middle of October." From there, Lew writes, the United States would have only whatever cash Treasury has on hand, estimated to be about $50 billion. Lew calls that potential situation "unacceptable." But Lew, like everyone else, is just working off his department's best guess....

The Federal Reserve’s holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasury securities—federal government debt—pushed above $2 trillion for the first time last week, hitting approximately $2,001,093,000,000 as of Aug. 14, according to the Fed’s latest weekly accounting. The Fed’s accounting for the previous week showed that it had owned approximately $1,993,375,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities as of Aug. 7. Back on Dec. 31, 2008, before the Fed began its strategy of “Quantitative Easing," the Fed owned only $475.9 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. Since then, the Fed’s holdings of U.S. government debt have more than quadrupled

(CNSNews.com) - According to the Daily Treasury Statement for July 26, which the Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 70 straight days. That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt. The portion of the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress first hit $16,699,396,000,000.00 at the close of business on May 17. At the close of every business day since then, it has also been $16,699,396,000,000.00, according to the official accounting published by the Treasury Department.

The recent Obama administration scandals shift the spotlight from the economy. Yet the recovery remains depressingly sluggish, with the labor force participation rate at a 34-year low as millions of able-bodied, able-minded Americans simply stopped looking for work. With President Obama in the fifth year of his presidency, let us examine the effect of the stimulus program, tax hikes, Obamacare and additional regulation on the economy. It isn't pretty. For the richest Americans, their net worth has fully recovered. For the non-rich, the recovery tells a very different story. At the start of "recovery" in 2009, the mean net worth...

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...

History shows that the destruction of affluent societies is often self-induced. Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, when historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs, and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure — and who gets the most of both — more often than poverty and exhaustion, cause civilization to implode. One...

“The answer is always more money… in ten years when we look back, is the weight of all this debt going to take care of all of these impulsive upticks?” http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/01/santelli-rips-the-keynesians-the-answer-is-always-more-money-video/

A major credit-rating firm warned it could downgrade the U.S. if lawmakers prioritize debt payments over other government obligations such as Social Security, or fail to tackle the nation's growing debt burden in the ongoing budget negotiations. Fitch Ratings, one of the ratings firms that are closely watching the U.S. inch closer to its borrowing limit, unveiled two potential routes to a downgrade Tuesday, laying out their analysis more specifically than in prior reports. Analysts predict the U.S. will hit its so-called debt ceiling between Feb. 15 and March 1. Fitch's warning comes as President Barack Obama and Republican leaders...

A US Default Would Be The Financial Equivalent Of This Painting Of Hell Brett LoGiuratoJanuary 14, 2013 Earlier today, President Barack Obama almost dared Republicans to not increase the nation's borrowing limit in a White House press conference. "If Congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks, veterans benefits will be delayed," Obama said. "... Investors around the world will ask if the United States of America is in fact a safe bet. Markets could go haywire. Interest rates would spike for anyone who borrowed money." One analyst — Michael Feroli, the chief economist at JP...

Three false arguments, pushed hard by the Obama administration and accepted on faith by the media and much of the political establishment, must be laid to rest if the American people are to understand the issues at stake in the federal "debt ceiling" debate. The first is that Congress's failure to raise the debt ceiling—the amount of money the federal government is authorized to borrow at any given time—will cause a default on the national debt. The second is that federal entitlement programs are constitutionally protected from spending cuts. The third is that the president can raise the debt ceiling...

Economic Collapse! A Leading Indicator Of Better Times To Come Economics / Global EconomyJan 10, 2013 - 04:00 AM By: Darryl R Schoon It’s going to get better; but, first, it’s going to get worse Time of the Vulture, 3rd ed. 2012 When I presented Time of The Vulture: How to Survive the Crisis and Prosper in the Process to the Positive Deviant Network in March 2007, the economic collapse hadn’t yet happened. The next year, it did. At the time, I suggested those in attendance shed debt, sell their homes and buy gold. Then, the US real estate market...

The next debt ceiling battle could come as soon as mid-February, when the federal government looks to hit its borrowing limit, a new report says. “Based on financial data from Treasury, we estimate that the government will be unable to pay all of its bills as early as February 15, also known as the X Date” said Steve Bell, senior director of the Economic Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in a statement. The Bipartisan Policy Center announced the findings of the organization’s study on Monday. According to a release from the Center, their analysis indicates that “the federal...

In his first weekly address of the New Year, President Obama touts the "fiscal cliff" compromise as "one more step in the broader effort to grow our economy and shrink our deficits" but warns that another "manufactured crisis" over the debt ceiling could wreak havoc on the economy.