[Freeptube]

When a business or a person's debt exceeds their assets---they're bankrupt. This country is bankrupt.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...al-us-economy/

Federal deficit on track for a record this fiscal year

Government debt to exceed U.S. economy

By Stephen Dinan
-
The Washington Times
12:16 p.m., Monday, February 14, 2011


President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.

Still, amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on Monday, the debt stands out because Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.

In one often-cited study, economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have argued that when a nation’s gross debt passes 90 percent it hinders overall economic growth. The government measures debt several ways. Debt held by the public includes the money borrowed from Social Security’s trust fund.

[Pataacculakp]

Richmond Times-Dispatch: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/busine...anc-ar-838888/

The U.S. government's net debt is about 65 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy. The gross debt, which includes money owed between government entities, is almost 100 percent of GDP.

...

Yet the United States is not the most indebted nation as a percentage of GDP, and this is not the first time the country has had this much debt as a percentage of the overall economy.

The American Revolution left the U.S. government more than $75 million in debt as of Jan. 1, 1791, according to the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt, a division of the Treasury. Except for a short few periods, the government has had a public debt ever since, though it has never defaulted on its loans.

Federal debt reached a peak ratio of 114 percent of GDP after World War II and declined to 26 percent by 1981, before rising again.

[sesWaipunsaws]

Interesting, Richard, that the debt as % of GDP began rising in 1981, the year that the beloved "conservative," Ronald Reagan, took office and instituted huge tax cuts, based on the (still GOP dogma) principle that wealth will trickle down to the rest of the population.