The marketable
debt of the U.S. government has more than doubled–climbing by 106
percent–while President Barack Obama has been in office, increasing
from $5,749,916,000,000 at the end of January 2009 to
$11,825,322,000,000 at the end of January 2014, according to the U.S.
Treasury’s latest Monthly Statement of the Public Debt.
During the eight-year presidency of George W.
Bush, the marketable debt of the U.S. government almost
doubled–climbing 93 percent–from $2,977,328,000,000 at the end of
January 2001 to $5,749,916,000,000 at the end of January 2009
71% Of Obama Voters “Regret” His
Re-Election
Over 7 in 10 Obama voters, and 55% of
Democrats, regret voting for President Obama’s reelection in 2012,
according to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll.
President Barack Obama signed into law the
first bipartisan budget produced by a divided Congress in 27 years,
abating the fiscal discord that spurred a government shutdown in
October.
The Senate yesterday passed a $1.01 trillion
budget deal easing $63 billion in automatic spending cuts, raising
user fees and lowering the U.S. deficit over 10 years. The plan keeps
in place about half of the spending cuts known as sequestration for
next year, and about three-quarters of the planned reductions for
2015.
Nine Republicans joined all Democrats to
back the measure, which passed the Senate 64-36.
Professor Kotlikoff joins the Financial Sense
Newshour for an eye-opening interview about the true state of fiscal
affairs in this country. He explains how the government uses
accounting tricks to hide the truth and keep everyone in the dark
about the US’s actual debt-load, which runs $205 trillion
versus the $17 trillion you often here in the news.
Professor Kotlikoff: The liabilities
the government owes are mostly off the books. We have a true
debt picture which is about $205 trillion. This is recording all
the future obligations the government has, whether they are official
obligations or not, such as paying for your social security benefits,
mine, or your mother’s Medicare benefits, defense spending, etc.
All of these things are really obligations that aren’t recorded on
the books as debt, whereas paying off future principal and interest
payments on Treasury bills and bonds are recorded. So, anyway, if you
take the value of all of those commitments and subtract all the taxes
coming to pay those commitments, the difference is what’s called
the fiscal gap; and that fiscal gap in the U.S. is now $205 trillion.
So, the true debt is $205 trillion; the official debt is only $17
trillion. So, most of the problems we’re facing, most of the debt
we have, the vast majority of it is off the books and Congress has
done bookkeeping to make sure the public doesn’t see it. So, when
we have these big fights over the debt ceiling, it’s really
laughable because at the same time we may not be expanding our
official debt at a very rapid rate, we are expanding our unofficial
debt or off-the-book debt, unrecorded debt, at a very high rate.
No Dhimmi
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