14 Facts About U.S. National Debt

[kingkarl 136]

14 Fun Facts About The U.S. Government's Massive Debt Problem

The U.S. government is currently creating one of the most colossal monuments in the history of the world. It is the U.S. national debt, and it threatens to literally destroy the American way of life. For decades now, this generation has been recklessly spending the money of future generations and has been convinced that they have been getting away with it.

Americans have been enjoying an obscenely high standard of living, but the party is almost over and the day of reckoning is fast approaching. It has been a great party, but it was fueled by the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. As many of us know, it can be extremely fun running up a huge credit card bill, but it can be even more painful to pay it off. Now our national "credit card bills" are starting to arrive and nobody really seems to know what to do.

The U.S. national debt will forever be a lasting reminder of the greed and recklessness of this generation. The truth is that the United States is NOT the "richest and most powerful nation" in the world. Rather, we are a spoiled, bloated, greedy nation that has run up a debt so big that words simply do not do it justice.

In fact, the U.S. national debt is so bizarre that it is hard to know whether to laugh about it or cry about it. For today at least, we will have some fun with it. The following are 14 fun facts about the U.S. government's massive debt problem....

#1) As of December 1st, 2009, the official debt of the United States government was approximately 12.1 trillion dollars.

#2) To pay this 12.1 trillion dollar debt would require approximately $40,000 from every single person living in the United States.

#3) Now the U.S. Congress has approved an increase in the U.S. government debt cap to 14.3 trillion dollars. to pay this increase off would require approximately $6,000 more from every man, woman and child in the United States.

#4) The U.S. government's debt ceiling has been raised six times since the beginning of 2006.

#5) So how hard is it to spend a trillion dollars? If you spent one dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in twelve days. At that same rate, it would take you 32 years to spend a billion dollars. But it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

#6) When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was only about 1 trillion dollars.

#7) The U.S. national debt has more than doubled since the year 2000.

#8) Barack Obama’s most recently proposed budget anticipates $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next 5 years.

#9) The U.S. national debt on January 1st, 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt rises by that amount about once an hour.

#10) The U.S. national debt rises at an average of approximately $3.8 billion per day.

#11) In 2010, the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

#12) The U.S. government has such a voracious appetite for debt that the rest of the world simply doesn't have enough money to lend us. So now the Federal Reserve is buying most U.S. debt, and the only reason they can do that is because they basically create the money to lend us out of thin air.

#13) A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#14) As if all of the above was not bad enough, according to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government, which is an official United States government report, the total liabilities of the United States government, including future social security and medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, now exceed 65 TRILLION dollars.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archive...ve-debt-problem

Also, check out this site: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

[3 SERIES 92]

Crazy. lol at the us debt clock

[bellicose 9]

That debt clock hurt my head

[Braeden320 0]

interesting reading

[Guest Ari Gold]

Should we all stick our heads in the sand at the same time, or should we drink the kool-aid first, THEN stick our heads in the sand?

[shaneg 0]

Wow glad im not in charge of that...

The family i work for are good friends of Barack, he used to have fundraisers at their house, will have to show them the debt clock, hurts my eyes.

Whats worse for the US is all that 12. whatever trillion dollars is borrowed off a private company...

the good old "Federal Reserve".... and at interest too.. gutted

Glad ours is owned by the government..

[Cale 36]

Whats worse for the US is all that 12. whatever trillion dollars is borrowed off a private company...

the good old "Federal Reserve".... and at interest too.. gutted

True story, and they did a good job of rail roading the US into creating and eventually bursting the housing bubble. Then to watch Greenspan, and now Bernanke dismiss the fact that it was their policies that were the rail road to this economic and financial crisis.

[yng_750 247]

what will really burst the bubble is when people realise there is more money on earth than things to buy with it

it used to be (from 5000bc until 1912ish) that maney notes were promisary for your gold being held in the safe i.e. but recently they abolished this system and its now sort of promisary that your money is worth something because the goverment says so when realistically if you look at all the resources and assets in the us there is about 20X more money than assets and most of it is just number on computers

consider this if you have 100,000 dollars in the bank and the global economy collapses you may just be able to buy a weeks grocerys with that money

[kerrynzl 3]

consider this if you have 100,000 dollars in the bank and the global economy collapses you may just be able to buy a weeks grocerys with that money

Or you can donate that 100 grand as prize money for NZ Motorsport [ It will have the same spending power as todays prize monies . . . . Zero!]

[kingkarl 136]

The people are financially screwed because they are greedy and lazy and the state is screwed because the lazy greedy people do not want to pay tax for a social system which suites them fine because then they can spend the money they do collect starting conficts and making arseholes of them selves

I disagree. I think the sh*t storm they have got themselves into is a combination of factors.

The government (specifically George Bush's) did most of the damage to the US economy. They entered into a war that would have been profitable, had they got some oil out of it. But they didn't, so it's just ended up as a huge drain on their finances. Then there's all the rest of Bush's excess spending that saw US national debt rise by $4,000,000,000,000 - 4 trillion dollars under his leadership.

Then as the boom time was coming to an end, Barack Obama came into office.

I don't blame him at all for the sh*t they're in right now, he was elected into the situation. Sure he's spending at a rate that makes George Bush look like a Jew, but he doesn't have any other options.

Either he sits back and lets the economy fall into a severe depression, or he spends up large in the hope that it's enough to kick start the economy again. If the spending approach doesn't work, then he's in a pretty similar situation to what he would have been if he didn't do anything.

Obviously consumers and businesses contributed greatly to the US' bleak situation too, but the Government and Federal Reserve are mostly to blame in my opinion.

[Grant 4]

I think that the fact that people who know little more than what they see on the news or read on this blog or that are waxing lyrical about something they know very little about or have any actual experience interesting.

None the less, this thread delivers the laughs.

Edited February 13, 2010 by Grant

[kingkarl 136]

I think that the fact that people who know little more than what they see on the news or read on this blog or that are waxing lyrical about something they know very little about or have any actual experience interesting.

None the less, this thread delivers the laughs.

Feel free to give us your opinion on the situation

[Grant 4]

I don't need to. I live it everyday and the reality is vastly different from what some doomsday, conspiracy theorists will have you believe.

I think you forget the vast size, population and resources (natural and intellectual) that the US has. This gives it the ability to be able to borrow when needed and then also pay it back. I am pretty sure that the US is better capable of paying it's current and future debt than the likes of NZ and other similar countries are.

[kingkarl 136]

I think you forget the vast size, population and resources (natural and intellectual) that the US has. This gives it the ability to be able to borrow when needed and then also pay it back. I am pretty sure that the US is better capable of paying it's current and future debt than the likes of NZ and other similar countries are.

Public debt as a percentage of GDP - 11 October 2009

[Grant 4]

That map has nothing to do with my statement, or on the ability of a country to service it's debt. It is merely a snapshot statistic.

Anyway, you believe what you want, or you are told in 6th form economics. I'll believe what I want to belive based on my significant tertiary education, years of management consutling and ability to look at things at a macro level looking at all of the relevant inputs. I'm not here to argue, I only made my first post as I found the rhetoric that followed amusing.

[kingkarl 136]

I'm not here to argue either, and I admit I know sweet F.A. about the whole situation. I just wanted a discussion. I genuinely want to hear your take on things and your perspective as an American resident.

I'm just repeating the facts that I have read, that I believe. I am always open to other points of view and I try base my opinions on what makes the most sense. I haven't heard a hell of a lot that suggests America is in a good state of affairs, so I'd like to hear from someone who does think this.

[westy 614]

I hate these threads.