http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-usa-debt-size-idUSTRE74I5TL20110519 (Reuters) - President Ronald Reagan once famously said that a stack of $1,000 bills equivalent to the U.S. government's debt would be about 67 miles high. That was 1981. Since then, the national debt has climbed to $14.3 trillion. In $1,000 bills, it would now be more than 900 miles tall. In $1 bills, the pile would reach to the moon and back twice. The United States hit its legal borrowing limit on Monday, and the Treasury Department has said the U.S. Congress must raise the debt ceiling by August 2 to avoid a default. The White House is trying to hammer out a deal with lawmakers to cut federal spending in exchange for a debt-limit increase. Most people have trouble conceptualizing $14.3 trillion. Stan Collender, a budget expert at Qorvis Communications, said the biggest sum most Americans have ever handled -- in real or play money -- is the $15,140 in the original, standard Monopoly board game. The United States borrows about 185 times that amount each minute. Here are some other metrics for understanding the size of the national debt and United States borrowing: * U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the United States borrows about $125 billion per month. With that amount, the United States could buy each of its more than 300 million residents an Apple Inc iPad. * In a 31-day month, that means the United States borrows about $4 billion per day. A stack of dimes equivalent to that amount would wrap all the way around the Earth with change to spare. * In one hour, the United States borrows about $168 million, more than it paid to buy Alaska in 1867, converted to today's dollars. In two hours, the United States borrows more than it paid France for present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and the rest of the land obtained by the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. * The U.S. government borrows more than $40,000 per second. That's more than the cost of a year's tuition, room and board at many universities. "That usually gets their attention," Doug Holtz-Eakin, who was chief White House economist under President George W. Bush, said in an email. "I have two kids, so every 10 seconds, the feds borrow more than I paid lifetime." * The Congressional Budget Office projects the total budget deficit in fiscal 2011 at about $1.4 trillion. "The net worth of Bill Gates, roughly around $56 billion, could only cover the deficit for 15 days," said Jason Peuquet, a policy analyst with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "The net worth of Warren Buffet, roughly around $50 billion, could only cover the deficit for 13 days." (Editing by Mohammad Zargham) Corrects last paragraph to say Jason Peuquet, not James Peuquet
Well, if we don't tax them, they'll create jobs and make the economy better and that will solve the problem.
Source: Bush supporters on November 2nd, 2004. It looks as though we're screwed either way. Bush nicely moved us from the end of one bubble, into another bubble. Any gains Bush had during his presidency were wiped out after he left office due to the housing bubble. Obama hasn't recovered from the housing bubble yet. The biggest jump on that last graph is probably TARP, a Bush program. Given that this recession is the biggest since the Great Depression, which took a decade & a world war to get out of, I am not getting antsy as to why Obama hasn't fixed the economy after only 2.5 years in office.
Reagan was embarrassed by how small that stack was, why else would he triple it's size by the time he left office?
Disgustingly high debt. Time to make some serious cuts and increase revenue through getting the economy back on track (which will put people back to work, which means more tax intake for the government from their checks) as well as through tax increases. No new taxes though. Honestly, Obama's goals right now should be (in no particular order) 1) Gas prices 2) Don't let the economy and job growth slow down 3) Strike a budget deal with broad American support (and American's know that in order to get this under control we need to stop the tax breaks as well as stop spending) If he REALLY wants votes, he should propose congressional pay freezes (as well as his own). Also, Is anyone else in favor of the Balanced Budget Amendment? I think that should be (if it already hasn't) proposed in congress. I wonder how many Americans support this...
[video=youtube;1yMupZaLCDQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMupZaLCDQ&playnext=1&list=PLA739CAB63A3F4580[/video]
If you stacked all the erections that exist at any moment on earth end to end, they'd reach from here to Uranus. barfo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis We overcame it. And the recession was made worse than it would have been (see the graphs above) by the guys in charge, who couldn't let a good crisis go to waste. [video=youtube;1yeA_kHHLow]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow[/video]
I was talking about the dot com bubble not the S&L crisis. Another dot com bubble might be forming now... Given that our economy essentially needs bubbles for prosperity to finally trickle down, that might be a good thing.
You only mentioned W. He inherited a tech bubble that had burst. In spite of the economy shedding numerous high tech jobs, the recovery wasn't as slow as the one with the massive spending effort.
Which is why I said he took us from the end of one financial crisis into another. What "recovery" are you talking about? The "recovery" that relied on the formation of a new housing bubble? There was really no recovery in the Bush years, only a bubble based almost entirely on fraud. Maybe Obama will get lucky with Facebook & Groupon going public with their multi-billion dollar valuations so dot com bubble 2.0 can start up. Hmmm Republican presidents seem to have financial sector bubbles while Democrat presidents get high tech bubbles. Interesting...
