Monday, May 7, 2012

To ask is to answer.

We’re sitting on $15.4 trillion in debt. How is it going to get paid? And by whom?

Back before 1970, foreigners held a 5 percent slice of U.S. public debt. Today foreigners hold nearly half the pie. And the government owes a bunch of it to itself — $4.6 trillion — including what it’s borrowed from the Social Security trust fund.

Is Washington at all alarmed? 

 "Serial Bubble Blowers." By Addison Wiggin and Samantha Buker, The Daily Reckoning, 5/6/12.

2 comments:

pdwalker said...

Why would they be? They are the "elite" and they'll survive the coming crash through their looted riches and the devil take the hindmost.

Martin McPhillips said...

Taken as a static number $15.4 trillion is manageable debt. What's not manageable is the trajectory at which it will continue to accumulate. With at least $75 trillion in unfunded federal liabilities sitting out there in the future, it's not clear that moving the janitorial socialists (the Republicans) in to mop things up after just four years of wild gangster socialists (the Democrats) is going to work.