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US National Debt Hits Historic $20 Trillion Mark

posted by martyb on Friday September 15 2017, @12:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the mucha-moolah dept.

DeathMonkey writes:

The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.

While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.

The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/

[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]

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  • (Score: 1) by ben_white on Friday September 15 2017, @03:21PM

    by ben_white (5531) on Friday September 15 2017, @03:21PM (#568487)

    The absolute number of dollars owed is meaningless. Debt as a percentage of GDP is a more meaningful number. See this graph [wikimedia.org].

    A bigger issue is that sovereign debt denominated in a country's fiat currency can not be looked at like debt held by individuals or companies. The US debt currently is about 100% of GDP. This is not, I repeat NOT, the same as if I make $75K a year, and I have $75K in unsecured debt.

    Sovereign debt is also not inherently bad. A certain level of government borrowing is healthy for a functioning economy run with a fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. Debt becomes a problem when 1) You can't repay it (which can't happen with a fiat currency), 2) To repay it you have to devalue your currency (not happening, just look at inflation rates over the past decade), or 3 )Others think you can't repay it, or they think the value of your currency will be significantly lower in the future (not happening, look at treasury rates over the past decade).

    --
    cheers, ben