BREAKING: US government releases its 2015 financial statements
Hot off the presses, the US government just published its audited financial statements this morning, signed and sealed by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
These reports are intended provide an accurate accounting of government finances, just like any big corporation would do.
And once again, the US government’s financial condition has declined significantly from the previous year.
For 2015, the government reports $3.2 trillion in total assets.
This includes everything from financial assets like bank balances to physical assets like tanks, bullets, aircraft carriers, and the federal highway system.
Curiously, the single biggest line item amongst these listed assets is the $1.2 trillion in student loans that are owed to the government by the young people of America.
This is pretty extraordinary when you think about it.
37% of the government’s total reported assets are student loans, which is now considered one of the most precarious bubbles in finance.
$1.2 trillion is similar to the size of the subprime mortgage market back in 2008. And delinquency rates are rising, now at 11.5% according to Federal Reserve data.
Plus, it’s simply astonishing that so much of the federal government’s asset base is tantamount to indentured servitude as young people pay off expensive university degrees that barely land them jobs making coffee at Starbucks.
On the other side of the equation are a reported $21.5 trillion in liabilities, giving the government an official net worth of negative $18.2 trillion.
This is down from last year’s negative $17.7 trillion and $16.9 trillion the year prior. It just keeps getting worse.
But there’s one thing that’s even more incredible about all of this.
You see, each year these financial statements are audited by the government’s in-house agency known as the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
All big companies do this. They publish financial statements, which are then reviewed by an independent audit firm.
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