{"id":53756,"date":"2020-06-20T06:04:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T11:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53756"},"modified":"2020-06-20T06:04:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T11:04:43","slug":"u-s-debt-has-no-meaning-anymore-until-it-eventually-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53756","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Debt Has No Meaning Anymore (Until It Eventually Does)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U.S. Debt Has No Meaning Anymore (Until It Eventually Does)<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"debt<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Wikimedia.org <\/a>| CC BY<\/a> | Photoshopped<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national debt currently looks like a runaway freight train. Not only is it clocking in at $26.1 trillion<\/strong><\/a> at the moment, but it has made the jump of the last few trillion dollars fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really fast.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolf Richter summarizes the frenzied ascent in a recent article<\/a>, appropriately calling it \u201cdebt out the wazoo\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trillions are now whooshing by at a breath-taking pace. The US gross national debt \u2013 the total of all Treasury securities outstanding \u2013 jumped by $1 trillion over the past five weeks, from May 4 through June 8, and by $2.5 trillion for the 11 weeks since March 23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The debt, which had been growing by as much as $1 trillion per year<\/em> since 2012, suddenly increased 2.5 times as much<\/strong> in a span of only 11 weeks<\/em>. (See graph below for the spike.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"national<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This dramatic increase comes along with a 5% increase in business debt<\/a> and a staggering 29% increase in commercial loan debt<\/a> \u2013 but we\u2019ll set that aside for another article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you stop and think about how much of an anchor that $26 trillion in debt could represent for the U.S. economy if anything more goes sideways, it\u2019s mind-boggling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byron King from Agora Financial sums<\/a> up the state of the insanity\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat $26 Trillion of Debt is Utterly Unpayable\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the average person incurs debt, they pay the debt back plus a certain rate of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byron King thinks<\/a> the U.S. is at the point \u201cwhere even paying interest will be problematic.\u201d Assuming this is true, at minimum, the U.S. could get stuck in a perpetual state of paying just the interest on its mountain of debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Debt Has No Meaning Anymore (Until It Eventually Does) Photo by Wikimedia.org | CC BY | Photoshopped The national debt currently looks like a runaway freight train. Not only is it clocking in at $26.1 trillion at the moment, but it has made the jump of the last few trillion dollars fast. Really fast. Wolf Richter summarizes the frenzied ascent in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18769,195,374,827,1576,15497],"class_list":["post-53756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-birch-gold-group","tag-debt","tag-gold","tag-united-states","tag-us-debt","tag-us-federal-debt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53757,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53756\/revisions\/53757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}