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

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: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @05:17PM (4 children)

    by Justin Case (4239) on Friday September 15 2017, @05:17PM (#568556) Journal

    What makes gold worth anything? ... It's no different than BitCoin.

    I will agree that gold and bitcoin have at least one valuable property in common: they are difficult to mass produce and/or poof into existence by self-serving politicians.

    So, when the money- and power-drunk politicians go on yet another bender, they can further devalue the "not a genuinely useful material" paper dollars, but they can't touch Real Money.

    Don't you get it? The reason everyone chases money so hard is that it is (relatively) scarce. Remove that attribute (gradually) and it (gradually) loses its worth.

    Any kind of money worth having (for long) is a proof-of-work token. "But some people get dollars without working for them." Exactly!

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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @05:32PM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 15 2017, @05:32PM (#568566)

    So, when the money- and power-drunk politicians go on yet another bender, they can further devalue the "not a genuinely useful material" paper dollars, but they can't touch Real Money.

    Oh yes they can! Some things governments on gold standards have done to devalue the currency:
    - Reduce the amount of gold per currency. For example, Roman coins got lighter as emperors became more desperate.
    - Change the weights used so that a "pound" is no longer what a "pound" used to be.
    - Mix other metals in with what appears to be a gold coin or gold bar.
    - Add another metal into the monetary system, e.g. silver.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 15 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)

      by Justin Case (4239) on Friday September 15 2017, @08:53PM (#568697) Journal

      governments on gold standards have done to devalue the currency

      Currency is not gold. Currency may or may not be fraudulent. Coins too may be counterfeit. But as I said, government cannot devalue the gold.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @10:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @10:50PM (#568729)

        Ha! They sure can! They may not be able to change the physical laws of the universe (gold atoms) but they sure can control the valuation of their monopoly money.

      • (Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:21PM

        by anotherblackhat (4722) on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:21PM (#569006)

        Gold has an intrinsic value - shiny jewelry, gold fingers on circuit boards and other industrial uses.
        But gold also has value as a currency (medium of exchange).
        For a very long time, it's value as a currency has been much greater than it's intrinsic value.
        While they can't devalue gold's intrinsic value, governments can (and have) interfered with gold's value as a currency - for example, they can make it illegal to own it.