Sunday, October 18, 2009

Federal Debt Update: Awaiting the New Numbers

The total Federal Debts consists of several elements the two major one being the debt held by the public and the debt held by the Government as a result of taking money from Medicare and Social Security funds. In view of the dramatically increasing debt that we see coming we will be tracking this closely. The data here is up until the end of June of this year.

First the debt in absolute terms. This is shown below and it depicts the growing debts held by third parties. Yet we should be concerned as the new health care plan gets implemented the Government will use it too as a piggy bank, taking in funds for a public plan and then using them.



















The next chart shows these elements as a percent of the GDP.



















Note in the above that we are approaching 90% of GDP as of last June and we anticipate that by then end of this calendar year we will be at 100% or more! By the end of the current Administrations first term we anticipate close to 130% of GDP. This fact seems to be lost in the claims that we need more stimulus. One should be concerned that these ratios will mean devaluing the dollar, inflation, and loss of financial funds to create new businesses. It will make the Carter Administration look like financial giants.