$315 Trillion in Debt … Is that possible??
By: Myles, April 13th, 2009
I have always been intrigued by numbers and facts. Every heard this one: liars figure, but figures do not lie. So lets look at the numbers, objectively.
TOTAL US DEBT TO DATE: $115 TRILLION - $315 TRILLION DOLLARS (excluding/including derivatives notional) … That’s $380,000.00 - $1,037,000.00 PER PERSON!!!
THE BREAK OUT:
$9.7 Trillion in bailouts
$11 Trillion in national debt
$17 Trillion in corporate/financial debt, and $13.8 Trillion in household debt
$1 Trillion in credit card debt
$10.5 Trillion in mortgages
$52 Trillion in social security/medicare obligations $200 Trillion in U.S. bank derivatives (notional)
TOTAL EXCLUDING derivatives: $115 TRILLION DOLLARS
TOTAL INCLUDING derivatives: $315 TRILLION DOLLARS
In budgetary context:
$2.3 Trillion budget deficit this year, $10 Trillion in the next 10 years.
In the context of the consumer balance sheet:
$20.5 Trillion of residential real estate
$8.8 Trillion of equities
$7.7 Trillion of deposits and cash
$4.1 Trillion of consumer durable goods
$1.6 Trillion of corporate bonds
$960 Billion of municipal securities
$920 Billion of agency paper
$273 Billion of treasury notes and bonds
TOTAL: $44.9 Trillion
OK … So the numbers are staggering. Lets just look at what constitutes the national debt (we will put all of this other debt aside for a minute). $11,046,247,657,049.48 (According to US Treasury Direct, 3/26/09)
The mounting US National debt, growing by billions every day, has recently topped the $11 trillion mark. If denominated in $1 bills, the cash would stack as high as the tallest building in the world, the 2683.7 foot Burj Dubai skyscraper… 1,474,918 times. At this height, it would create a block of bills with a base approximately twice the size of the Empire State Building, which is just under the size of three American football fields.
If consolidated into a single stack of $1 bills, it would measure about 749,666 miles, which is enough to reach from the earth to the moon twice (at perigee), with a few billion dollars left to spare. If the amount was laid out, the area of the $1 bills would cover the state if Rhode Island three times over, and in $100 bills the amount would carpet about 3/4 the area of Washington DC.
It is also interesting to note that this number is approximately 13 times the amount of US currency in circulation, according to the Treasury bulletin, which lists the amount at $853.6 billion as of December 31, 2008.
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