US National Debt: Ten Trillion and Counting

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This week's Frontline (link via SimoleonSense) dealt with the blooming US National Debt, destined to double within the next ten years. In all likelihood, under Obama the debt will double within 5 years -- but then, who's counting? Certainly no one running the current government of clowns.

The graphic above demonstrates the rapid acceleration of deficit spending under the barely begun Obama administration. Intelligent persons will ignore the Obama administration projections, then take the CBO projections and double them.

View the Frontline episode

Here is an excerpt from the Frontline interview with Paul O'Neill (via Paul Kedrovsky via SimoleonSense):

Can the United States government go bankrupt?

Not in the classical sense, but we could get ourselves into a position where people won't take our paper anymore. And that's a really desperate position to be in when we've killed the idea of good faith and credit of the United States. That could destroy our society as we've known it.

Can't we just turn the printing press on?

Nope, because at some point people will prefer to have broken pieces of glass than federal money. ... Look at the German economy in 1923. People got paid twice a day in Germany in 1923, because if they waited to spend the money that they were paid at lunchtime at dinnertime, the money wouldn't be worth anything.

And so people were actually willing to pay all of their money, a wheelbarrow full of money, for a broken piece of shiny glass, because the broken glass was worth more than a wheelbarrow full of money. We don't want to get there, but semi-modern societies have gotten there. _Frontline