Free Republic

Total US Revenue October 2022 through August 2023. (11 months) $3.97 trillion $ 3.97 ÷11 = $.3609 trillion per month × 12 months = $4.33 trillion Total Revenue for the current fiscal year. Social Security & Medicare Taxes are 37% of the Total Revenue or $1.60 trillion Thus all Revenue from All Sources except Social Security and Medicare is $2.727 trillion Total debt is now $33 trillion Total Revenue ÷ Total Debt = 8.26 % Note Social Security and Medicare are currently running a deficit, meaning they do not create a surplus to help the General Fund. If inflation causes...

The debt, which equals the amount of money borrowed by the federal government to cover operating expenses, hit $33.04 trillion Monday, according to the Treasury Department. A roughly 50% increase in federal spending between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2021 contributed to the debt topping $33 trillion, the department said.

The situation surrounding the U.S. federal debt is not only concerning but also increasingly alarming. The federal debt has recently surpassed a staggering $33 trillion, a historic milestone in itself. What's even more worrisome is the rapid pace at which it's been growing. Since June, it has been expanding at an annualized rate of 18.5%. What makes this situation even more unsettling is that the United States hasn't even experienced a recession yet. The current level of Treasury issuances is truly unprecedented, and this raises questions about the nation's ability to manage its debt responsibly. For some perspective, consider that...

A seemingly unrelenting wave of debt is piling onto America’s balance sheet. New data from the U.S. Treasury Department show the federal debt increased by over $296.524 billion from August 8th to September 8th, reaching a total of $32.940 trillion. The new numbers come as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon issues a warning on America’s fiscal trajectory. At a conference hosted by Barclays, Dimon told reporters that America’s rapid rate of spending is bound to have a significant impact on households. “I just think people make a mistake to look at real-time numbers and not look at the future. And...

TOKYO — One of the worst-kept secrets in global central banking is the extent to which Chinese officials are swapping dollars for gold. Governor Yi Gang’s team at the People’s Bank of China isn’t admitting as much. The PBOC doesn’t have to, though, given the clear policy trajectory Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pursued in recent years: internationalizing of the yuan as the top rival to the dollar. Xi’s position hasn’t changed so much as other governments are catching on that trust is waning in the global reserve currency and an alternative to the dollar is badly needed. Particularly as...

New Zealand tech CEO, Kim Dotcom did the math on the United States’ sovereign debt and he tweeted a thread about it, saying it may the most important thread that he may ever make. Kim explains that US spending and debt have spiraled out of control and the Government can only raise the money it needs by printing more of it, which means that hyperinflation is guaranteed. He says this has been going on for decades and there’s no way to fix it and that the US got away with this for so long, because US dollar is the world’s...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned congressional leaders that the U.S. is on track to default on the national debt in October if the White House and Congress are unable to raise the debt limit. In a Wednesday letter, Yellen said that the Treasury Department would likely run out of cash and exhaust “extraordinary” measures to keep the federal government within its legal borrowing limit at some point next month. "Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our...

America’s national debt now exceeds $123 trillion, according to a new report, or more than four times the official figure of $28 trillion, as calculated by the U.S. Treasury Department at the end of March.Federal spending related to the CCP virus pandemic and economic lockdown added nearly $10 trillion to the total in 2020, according to the latest edition of the “Financial State of the Union 2021” report, compiled and published annually by Chicago-based nonprofit Truth in Accounting (TIA).But spending amid the pandemic represents only a small portion of the total difference between the official government figure and TIA’s calculation.“Our...

WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on April 14 pushed back on warnings about a rising federal budget deficit and national debt due to an aggressive fiscal response to the pandemic and said the “current level of the debt is very sustainable.”“There’s no question of our ability to service and issue that debt for the foreseeable future,” he said during a virtual interview hosted by the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.He warned, however, that the national debt is growing “meaningfully faster” than the U.S. economy.“That’s by definition, unsustainable over time. It’s a different thing to say that the current level of...

The U.S. has had a slew of black swan events of late. The next one could be the worst. The U.S. has had a slew of black swan events of late. For the purposes here, I'll define a black swan as having the following characteristics. First, it disrupts the equilibrium of society. Second, it is not commonly foreseen, and, if discussed at all prior to happening, it is discounted as highly improbable. Thirdly, in retrospect, the black swan seems to have been inevitable. I'm sure Nasim Nicholas Taleb would not object to such a description. In chronological order, the black...

At our current rate of spending, the U.S. will be unable to confront major problems in the future because we’ve already stretched ourselves too thin.America’s debt and deficits usually are spoken of in terms of economics, but they have huge implications for national security. To see why, start with the economics angle. Famed investor Michael Burry — who foresaw the housing market bust and was played by Christian Bale in the hit film “The Big Short” — has just issued a warning. In a series of tweets, Burry said that the stock market could crash because of too much debt....

If the past year was dominated by the huge human costs of COVID-19, the next few years will be about its economic aftermath, including the alarming rise of US debt. What’s needed is multilateral cooperation - a new 'Grand Alliance.'On Friday, Congressional leaders failed to secure a bipartisan deal on a $900 billion pandemic relief package. A government shutdown was avoided only with a 2-day extension.A protracted shutdown would amplify the risks for pandemic escalation and economic crisis, amid the long-awaited vaccine rollout. Bipartisan tensions are compounded by the impending Georgia Senate runoff races in January that will determine control...

Last week, the U.S. passed a milestone — US federal debt in private hands exceeded 100% of GDP. But does all this debt matter, or is worrying about debt passé? This debate has been going on among economists for a while. One does not need to go to the incoherence of "modern monetary theory" to find support for the view that debt has few consequences. Olivier Blanchard, of MIT and the IMF, in his Presidential Address to the American Economic Association, (excellent summary here) declared that “there may be no fiscal costs” of additional debt. The core of his argument...

WASHINGTON—America’s current national debt stands at roughly $23.3 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Debt to the Penny” website, which is so precise that visitors can pick a specific date in the recent past—say Jan. 1, 2000—and get the exact amount on that day: $5,776,091,314,225.33. While based on those figures, the national debt has more than quadrupled in that time frame, it’s actually much worse than that, according to calculations by Bill Bergman. “This calculation highlights some of the pitfalls and perils of false precision,” Bergman, the director of research for the Chicago-based nonprofit advocacy group Truth in Accounting...

President Donald Trump's new budget confirms that without corrective action, trillion-dollar deficits will be with us for years and perhaps decades to come. Trump's budget plan has many smart and urgent spending reforms. But will Congress ignore them once again? Alas, probably, but the longer we wait, the shorter the debt bomb fuse. But step one in solving this crisis is to recognize the facts about it and to dispel the pervasive mythologies about what caused this ocean of systemic borrowing and how best to deal with it. Myth 1: Trump created these deficits. No, no, no. These were the...

The total of U.S. federal, state, and local debt, in combination with future spending commitments, foreshadows the most predictable financial disaster in human history. Washington’s obligations, growing at an estimated $1 trillion annually, now exceed $23 trillion, while neither of America’s two largest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, are on sound footing.Going down to the state and local levels, a May 2018 report by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government reveals that public pension funding in New Jersey and Kentucky is already at “high risk of insolvency,” with California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and several large cities close behind....

* Total US debt including all forms of government, state, local, financial and entitlement liabilities comes close to 2,000% of GDP, according to AB Bernstein. * The biggest potential load comes from entitlements, but is being pressured from rising levels of federal government debt as well. * The warnings about potential debt hazards come as the total federal debt outstanding has surged to $22.5 trillion. * A debt reform advocate says now is the time for the U.S. to tackle the issue, before recession hits. Total potential debt for the U.S. by one all-encompassing measure is running close to 2,000%...

The massive spending deal, negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and agreed to by the president, looks poised to kill off the Budget Control Act of 2011—the law that was meant to restrain federal spending. With that law on the way out, the question arises: Where can fiscal conservatives turn to exert real and lasting fiscal discipline? Thankfully, two members of Congress have introduced a bill to do just that. The Maximizing America’s Prosperity Act—or MAP Act—is a bill proposed by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., that would limit federal spending...

Each year, millions of Americans pay their taxes. We suffer through the nightmare of unfathomable IRS forms, spend tens of billions of dollars on tax experts so the IRS won’t audit us … and yet watch as other people slip through the cracks.Those cracks are pretty large. The IRS has concluded that approximately 16.3 percent of taxes simply don’t get paid. This was the case in 2001, 2006, and 2008-2010.In 2018, this meant that almost $643 billion in federal taxes simply went unpaid, based upon the $3.3 trillion pulled into federal coffers– what the IRS and Government Accountability Office...

U.S. debt has climbed to an alarming level, according to DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach. “People are starting to realize that the deficit and debt are totally out of control,” Gundlach said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” Tuesday. Guldach said the “main reason” the yield curve between 3-year Treasury bonds and 5-year bonds is steepening is a ballooning deficit. Gundlach — sometimes known as the “bond king” — runs the $50 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund. Its five-year performance is one of the best in its category, but lagged most of its peers in 2019 with a gain of just...