america's national debt

[BRIN]

i heard it was something huge any info on it?

[englandsgay]

its big so what? itd be real easy to pay it back though... just have to stops giving all that foreign aid. lol... oh but then you whine about that too I guess.

[BRIN]

it doubles every 10 years with it 10% interest i heard

[sc4r]

The US national debt means that every US citizen owes approximately $25,000. The net assets of the average citizen (excluding this debt) are just $1000.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Not to put to fine a point on it the ‘American miracle’ is no such mysterious thing. It’s no accomplishment to buy nice things with borrowed money. Sooner or later the loans will stop being extended and increased. At that point you will realise that what you have done is sell your future. At the moment it all looks rosy because the people who are buying are interested in buying more. But you are in exactly the same position as a man selling off his land, sooner or later the assets you retain will not pay the interest, at that point you lose all the land.

Borrowing to invest is one thing and can be productive, the idea is to take resources which you can use better than someone else and generate enough future income that you can repay the original debt. But this isn’t what the US is doing, it is borrowing to consume and to fund investments benefitting specific people disproportinately as evidenced by the fact that the debt has been getting bigger every week for the last 30 years.

Some of the people who own the debt are also American citizens, these people are alright jack. But most of you are getting steadily owned and you can’t see it. (which is one reason why income disparities are steadily increasing every year).

Some of the loan is being used to fund military spending and aid. This is in effect used by America as a whole to facilitate purchase of other people’s futures in other lands (exactly what many think Iraq is about). It isn’t being done as crudely as to simply put up a big sign PROPERTY OF USA KEEP OFF* but this is what in effect it is. But who personally do you think gets to own these dubious aquisitions ? all the people who are taking out loans to fund it ? no, of course not, it is the same people who already own the debt. US taxes and borrowings are enriching them by effectively reducing the price of their external purchases. You pay for it, they get to own it, and later they are going to use the actual fact that you paid for it to claim that you owe them still more! Unbelievable. But this is exactly what capitalism married to a pseudo democratic government does.

The debt owners will balance out how and when they call in the debt, they will keep you sweet by making sure that you can continue to purchase nice things as long as possible (low energy prices) because it is not in their interests to demand repayment until they know you cannot afford to do it, and know you are not powerful enough to refuse. They may even hope that they can continue to gobble up cheap external assets that they can drip feed back. They are not after all actually out specifically to shaft you, they are interested in enriching themselves. If they can find a way to keep you happy as well they’d much prefer it (they don’t actually want mass uprisings after all, and they do want a source of fighters to make sure the external loans are also honoured) but it is becoming more and more obvious that this bubble cannot be sustained. It will at some point burst. The only question then will be who suffers in the aftermath (BTW the US government opposition to sorting out Global warming gives an ominous hint as to how the boys at the top think they may be able to address this problem).

Of course not all (maybe not even most, just possibly not even any) of the creditors even realise what they are doing. They are simply following the conventional wisdom of the system they subscribe to; but this is what it amounts to and where it must inevitably end up unless something radical is done to change the system.

* Partly because it is not going to be the property of the USA. It will become the property of Bill Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, GWB, Rupert Murdoch, et al.

[kylie]

im not sure if this is what you mean, but yeah the US trade deficit is something like 480bil.

edit: i just did some searching and apparently its -41 bil $. im sure some deficit for the US was at the -480 mark though.
uh, so according to economist.com i was right the first time. dunno where the hell the other sites got -41bil from then.
(Edited by feoric at 2:21 pm on Mar. 31, 2003)


(Edited by feoric at 2:24 pm on Mar. 31, 2003)

[Shyne]

Almost 6 trillion dollars.

[BRIN]

Thanks heaps shyne.By the way englandgay if america stops giving foriegn aid to it's favorite country columbia that about $800,000.00 then it will fall to our favorite marxist guerrilas the farc.Then you will be the one whineing and *****ing like Seinfeld

[themanwill]

True BRIN, and what about the money Israel gets from the US to persecute the Palistinians

[US Shockrule2000]

Quote: from themanwill on 10:26 pm on April 1, 2003
True BRIN, and what about the money Israel gets from the US to persecute the Palistiniansall money from the US to enforce it's hegemony is money very well spend, imo.. ppl need someone to look after them... the good ol' US of A, that is.. yeah!!