The scary actual U.S. government debt

The scary actual U.S. government debt

www.theglobeandmai l.com

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

(visit the link for the full news article)

$200,000,000,000,000 in debt.

Wow.

I guess we now know why the Administration is making all the Asian trips. The article states that the IMF has acknowledged this but I can't find the actual report on their website. I had wanted to post it.

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

I have a feeling that we, the American public, will be hearing about this right after November 2nd and that world leaders already know about this. Prepare yourselves, it's going to get hard.

Prof. Kotlikoff uses “fiscal gap,” not the accumulation of deficits, to define public debt. The fiscal gap is the difference between a government’s projected revenue (expressed in today’s dollar value) and its projected spending (also expressed in today’s dollar value). By this measure, the United States is in worse shape than Greece.

"the United States is in worse shape than Greece".

www.theglobeandmai l.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thank you for this post.

I am almost rendered speechless. If this is true then we have a big big problem. How could we let it get this bad?

By being deceived into the facade of the voting process~

reply to post by Surefire2


By going into two wras that you had no hope of winning?

Oh, and silly fiscal policy.

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


Somehow this doesn't surprise me. I knew the $13.5T debt is just PR babble. They must be using an antique formula to establish those numbers. Just like their lie of 9% unemployment while nearly 50,000,000 people are on food stamps (so if there is, say, 200M 'work capable' people, then food stamp benefits are up to 25%). I had always tripled the debt and figured it closer to $50T versus the $76T I saw on a debt clock site. $200T is quite plausible I'd imagine.

Sigh......

I know many disagree .... but I am compelled to say it.....

It is so because the global (supranational) banking cartel has made it so... and our political thespians have yielded to the vainglory and insurance for their posterity in exchange for our debt serfdom.

This is what happens when fractional reserve lending is sanctioned along with a monopoly on currency and monetary policy.

Ya think they're ever gonna even admit that? Nah. It's all the citizen's fault! We did something or didn't do something and now "they" will save us with more debt-money...... also taxes, tariffs, and fines with legally mandated consumerism... Even our most vocal and erudite senators and congressman approach the problem the same way a child timorously corrects their parent... dreading the repercussions.

It's a global century-long con-game... and we believe the banking system is just 'part' of the problem, rather than it's source. In the meantime trillions get siphoned off into real wealth for a precious few. The corruption extends to every institution and government that relies on loans to function... (which appears to be all of them)

Well this massive increase is when you take into account the pensions and medicare and social security commitments etc. The commitments that where fraudulently created by politicians to win more votes.

The second civil war could be between the public sector workers and private sector. A private sector that might continue to get squeezed to pay for public workers retiring after 20 years for 80% of their pay, for public workers who scam the system with fake overtime to increase their pensions.

How I long for a politician to come out and say that all these govt programs must be 100% eliminated. the solution is simple its the will power that is hard.

We're screwed...and now the Fed is trying to foster inflation at the same time they're telling us to save for our retirement - that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Not to derail the thread, but this thread was from August 10th. (Further food for thought on the subject).

Is the US national debt actually *gulp* $200 Trillion?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

FortAnthem

edit: August 13th, rather!

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


be careful man i dont want people to say your parroting glenn beck.

yeah 13 trilllion has never been the real number of debt this country holds

the number is obviously higher and i am sorry but i think its the imf and globalization at fault as well as the policies of a certian polticial party running off wealth in this country and who destroyed the upper and middle classes.


theres only one thing i am confused about? who is holding the iou? who do we owe? other governments?

but that cant be possible noone would hold a 200 trillion dollar marker.

can someone answer me that? please

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman

The scary actual U.S. government debt

www.theglobeandmai l.com

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

(visit the link for the full news article)

Right...so how about the shift in balance of power within the middle east. Is that something the news source refuses to show...!,...oh hold on ..im not that a security threat for now.

the govt's solution?

all out ME war to secure ALL oil reserves
re-sell oil back to countries at 4 -5 times the current price.

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


Someone please tell me how the debt is dangerous. There are countries which have failed to pay us debts since WWI. Whats the threat?

reply to post by maluminse


Thank you, someone thinking clearly.

Don't you all see that the 200 trillion debt, is just a number? Lets make it 3853842398745 quadrillion, would it really make a difference compared to now? Things would be the exact same as they are now.

Think about it, 50 years ago, 5 million was a lot. 20 years ago, 5 billion was a lot.

10 years ago, 5 trillion was a lot

currently, 500 trillion is a lot.

10 years from now, 5 quadrillion will be a lot.

And the bottom line,

We'll all be screaming OH NOES 5 quadrillion, omg, what are we gonna do.....

Debt is a scam, its fear mongering, and manipulation at its best. They control the people, by controlling the economy. It won't crash until they want it too.

Money is simply paper, so whether you have 5 quadrillion pieces of paper, its all worthless. It's just a scam.

the whole system, is a corrupt greedy and dangerous way of life. But hey, we don't control it, they do. And trust me when i say, they will not let that system fall, without taking the entire house of cards down with them. If they go down, we all go down, we are essentially slaves to the bigger game.

reply to post by xxshadowfaxx


We are all bent on trying to fight them, but that means we are really fighting ourselves. We have no choice but to live in the system they control, sad to say. Because when you fight it, and we will, we will eventually find a weakness. When they weakness is attacked, our way of life will change forever. Possible world wars, many deaths and so on, poverty at its finest.

The main culprit.... OIL.

oil drives the system. why do you think alternate energy is so hard to find and so expensive to buy? Because they based their system in oil, and that is where the economy lies. Alternate energies will never win the battle until we run out of oil, in which, will be the end of the world, because thats when they will collapse the system, when they're done sucking it dry.

The next 100 years of humanity are bleak, omitting any 2012 prophicies if true. 100 year ago, cars were just being invented. Look at us now, and then imagine another 100 years from now. Does anyone out there, see a slightest bit of hope? Did you take into account the populations? The resources? How long can humanity spread, like a virus, before theres no more room to go?

Wellll.... we can build sea domes, take to the stars and build space stations, cruisers, and planetary colonies. We can populate much of Canada, Siberia, Australia, and build north-land refuges. We can also construct apartment-style smart-homes that grow their own food, produce their own energy, and produce their own resources.
There's also an entire subterranean layer that could be utilized across the globe, wherever earthquakes and crustal plates joining, aren't.

Please let's stop referring to our species as a "plague", as outlined so very poignantly by Agent Smith in the Matrix. Despite the 'feel-good' aspect that statement might convey, the truth is that there are a lot of really decent human-beings on the planet. In all seriousness, with attention to good agriculture, we could easily support 35 or 40 billion of us on earth. We need to stop buying into the concept that we will fall apart if the population reaches this figure or that figure; that's only brain-washing from the folks with the big agenda for our extinction. Yes, they want to save the planet "from humans", by killing most of us "useless eaters" off. We can't with their systems in place, but we certainly could if we liberated ourselves from their crippling dynasties.

What is the government's plan to pay back this debt?

I cant believe no one in "Main Stream Media" or The Government has even asked any questions about it or even talked about it at all,

Anyways,
According to those numbers Annual GDP is about 24 trillion per year,
If you took 1/4th of the annual GDP or 6 trillion a year and used it to pay back the debt,
The debt would be fully paid off in 48 years,


With 1/4 of the GDP going to repaying debts;
The US will have to adjust to using only 3/4 of annual GDP

6 trillion a year could easily be found leaking out of the government budget,
For example,
Tariffs on imported goods,
The war in Iraq (which is estimated to be at 2 billion per week!!!)
The occupation in Afghanistan,
Military black projects,
Mexican Immigrants not paying taxes,
Churches not paying taxes,
Importation of foreign oil,
The list goes on and on

With just the Iraq war alone, in 10 years the US has accumulated 800 billion in debt

Originally posted by maluminse
reply to post by Iamonlyhuman

Someone please tell me how the debt is dangerous. There are countries which have failed to pay us debts since WWI. Whats the threat?

Originally posted by xxshadowfaxx
reply to post by maluminse

 

Thank you, someone thinking clearly.

Don't you all see that the 200 trillion debt, is just a number? Lets make it 3853842398745 quadrillion, would it really make a difference compared to now? Things would be the exact same as they are now.

The answer to maluminse’s question and the rebuttal of xxshadowfaxx’s comment is in the definition of debt. Debt is when you owe (to other people/governments) more than you bring in (through revenues). Debt is only possible if someone else is willing to lend you money. There are two types of “income” – borrowing and taxes. Tax revenues are wholly (100%) consumed by paying the interest on the borrowed debt so now we’re down to only one form of “income” to pay for all of the government’s expenses – borrowing (or more accurately debt). When you use debt as your only source of income to pay for all of your expenses AND also begin increasing your expenses at the same time (spending more and more), lenders begin to stop lending money because they are afraid that you won’t be able to pay even just the interest on the debt (which is really the only part that they’re worried about). So then the problem becomes one of how do you raise enough money to just pay the interest on the debt so that you keep your “investors” happy enough to continue lending you money – because that’s the only “income” you have.

The only mechanism the government has for raising money to pay just the interest on the debt to foreign governments (i.e. investors) is tax revenue.

He cites earlier calculations by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that concluded that the United States would need to increase tax revenue by 12 percentage points of GDP to bring revenue into line with spending commitments. But the CBO calculations assumed that the growth of government programs (including Medicare) would be cut by one-third in the short term and by two-thirds in the long term. This assumption, Prof. Kotlikoff notes, is politically implausible – if not politically impossible.

GDP is Gross Domestic Product – the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country by ALL of it’s citizens and corporations. In the above quote, assuming a DECREASE in government spending – which we all know is not on the Administration’s agenda, the U.S. “would need to increase tax revenue by 12 percentage points of GDP . 12% over the total value of all good and services produced in the country!!!!!!!!! Increase taxes to the breaking point – you think we pay too many taxes now, just wait.

How does a 50% federal income tax sound? In addition to all of the state and local taxes (income, real estate, property, etc.) and sales taxes on all of the things we buy??????

Perhaps loss of the whole way of life for a minimum of 310 million people (the current U.S. population), assuming that it doesn’t bring the whole world economic system down with it, is something that the population couldn’t stomach? When people realize that 42 minutes out of every hour at work is spent working just to pay taxes and not to buy things that they need for their families, how do you think they're going to react?

What’s next after that? I’ll let you answer that but I don’t think people are going to be nice about it.

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


Watch this:

www.usdebtclock.org...

Fun eh?