''US Debt - Visualized in physical $100 bills''

From  Demonocracy      

Published on Dec 5, 2012

US Debt Ceiling is @ $16.4 Trillion
Original US Debt Visualized article:
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html

Fiscal Cliff Visualized article:
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/fiscal_cliff/fiscal_cliff.html

Economic Infographics:
http://Demonocracy.info

How can you help?
To help pay off the US Federal Government debt you can go to
https://www.pay.gov/ and pay/donate as much as you like.

Richard Duncan: ''Civilization May Not Survive ''Death Spiral''

From Money Morning

''Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America's $16 trillion federal debt has escalated into a "death spiral, "as he told CNBC.

And it could result in a depression so severe that he doesn't "think our civilization could survive it."

And Duncan is not alone in warning that the U.S. economy may go into a "death spiral."

Since the recession, noted economists including Laurence Kotlikoff, a former member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, have come to similar conclusions.

Kotlikoff estimates the true fiscal gap is $211 trillion when unfunded entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are included.'' 

read more 

''Blink! U.S. Debt Just Grew by $11 Trillion to $222 Trillion''

From Bloomberg

''In the course of that year, the U.S. government’s fiscal gap -- the true measure of the nation’s indebtedness -- rose by $11 trillion.

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using the Congressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast -- the Alternative Fiscal Scenario -- is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference -- this year’s true federal deficit -- is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

This fantastic and dangerous growth in the fiscal gap is not new. In 2003 and 2004, the economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale extended the CBO’s short-term forecast and measured fiscal gaps of $60 trillion and $86 trillion, respectively. In 2007, the first year the CBO produced the Alternative Fiscal Scenario, the gap, by our reckoning, stood at $175 trillion. By 2009, when the CBO began reporting the AFS annually, the gap was $184 trillion. In 2010, it was $202 trillion, followed by $211 trillion in 2011 and $222 trillion in 2012.''

read more

Greyerz - ''Greatest Financial Collapse The World Has Ever Seen''

From King World News

''Almost every single major country in the world is bankrupt, and no one has the tools or a plan to get these countries out of this crisis.  So countries will go bankrupt by default or by printing excessive money.  This situation will continue to get worse and ultimately lead to a hyperinflationary depression.

Then you have the banking crisis.  The banks are insolvent and they are also in a liquidity crisis.  And this is, again, worldwide.  There is no way the banks will be able to survive this without massive assistance.  This is a banking crisis of the magnitude which will amount to trillions of dollars, and if we take the whole of the derivative positions, it could be hundreds of trillions of dollars because of the counterparty risks.''

read more 

''Hidden state, municipal debt puts taxpayers on hook for trillions of dollars''

From Watchdog.org

''Every American’s share of the official national debt is almost $50,000 and growing fast. But that is only the biggest visible part of the government tab that generations of Americans must pay. 

Our $15.6 trillion federal government debt is frequent fodder for congressional debates and cable news shows.

 

However, a lesser-known but equally bankrupting bill is owed by those same taxpayers — trillions of dollars in debt and unfunded obligations racked up by state and local governments."

 

read more 

Zero Hedge: "Top 5 Banks Hold 95.7%, Or $221 Trillion, Of Outstanding Derivatives''

From Zero Hedge

"To wit: in Q4 2011, of the total $230.8 trillion in US outstanding derivatives, the Top 5 banks (JPM, BofA, Morgan Stanley, Goldman and HSBC) accounted for 95.7% of all Derivatives. In some respects this is good news: in Q2, the Top 5 banks held 95.9% of the $250 trillion in derivatives."

read more 

''Feds’ Creative Accounting Masks Trillions in Unfunded Liabilities''

from new american...


"Officially, the United States’ federal budget deficit for 2011 will be roughly $1.3 trillion, a staggering and almost incomprehensible amount of money. But this doesn’t even come close to the actual shortfall faced by the Treasury this year. “The $1.3 trillion budget deficit would be $4.2 trillion if the change in the current cost of Social Security and Medicare promises during fiscal 2011 were included,” according to a Washington Postop-ed by Bryan R. Lawrence, founder of New York-based investment partnership Oakcliff Capital."

Rasmussen: ''Deficit Closer to $4 Trillion for 2012''

"The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday reported that the federal budget deficit is projected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2012. That number is troubling enough but the reality is much worse. The United States will actually go about $4 trillion further in debt during the year.

The difference comes from the fact that government accounting procedures simply ignores the cost of benefits being promised for future Social Security and Medicare recipients. While precise estimates vary as to how much these promises cost, they are in the range of $3 trillion annually. It is important to note that the CBO is not to blame for this accounting gimmick. That agency typically does a sound job of operating within the ground rules established by Congress. Unfortunately, the rules often make little sense." 


from newsmax...

'Economist Says National Debt Really $211 Trillion'

from the new americam.....

"If a $14.3 trillion national debt sounds like a staggering sum, economist Lawrence Kotlikoff's estimate of the nation's real  long-term indebtedness might bowl you over. Kotlikoff, who was a senior economist on President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, calculates the debt at $211 trillion.

"We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt," Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University, said on the weekend edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered. "If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures," Kotlikoff said, "and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap. That's our true indebtedness."

The main drivers of the real national debt are Social Security and Medicare, funded by the Federal Insurance Contributions ACT (FICA) payments that both employee and employer pay with every paycheck. As the average life span has increased and the elderly portion of the population has grown since the program was adopted in the 1930s, the "contributions" have fallen increasingly short of the "transfer payments" to recipients. Social Security alone will run into the trillions annually in another 10 to 15 years, when an average of $40,000 a year will be due to 78 million baby boomers, Kotlikoff said. "Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you're talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population. That's an enormous bill that's overhanging our heads, and Congress isn't focused on it."

The "official" national debt of $14.3 trillion amounts to $47,667 for every man, woman and child in America, based on the current population of 300 million. If Kotlikoff's $211 trillion is accurate, the per capita long-term debt obligation comes to more than $700,000"...............READ MORE 

What does $114.5 trillion dollars look like?

follow this link to see the graphic..........from http://www.wtfnoway.com/

'Thanks to both parties, the cumulative trade deficits since 1976 add up to a staggering $10 trillion'

the american people have sold out by the military industrial complex, multi-national corporations and all three branches of our so called government.......the budget for the "war department" is not about keeping americans safe, but rather to keep the world safe for the fortune 500........a must read..................from philly.com....

"Who's to blame?

But don't fault just Congress. Every occupant of the White House, regardless of party, has been equally zealous in selling out workers on trade matters. For decades, every president has been an ardent advocate of free trade and has resisted any significant step that might be interpreted as protectionist, this even though our trading partners were doing the opposite.

In 1985, after thousands of textile-industry jobs had been lost to imports, Congress passed legislation to impose higher tariffs on textile imports, but President Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill, calling it protectionist and a violation of free trade. "We want to open markets abroad, not close them at home," he said in a refrain that had become distressingly familiar to American workers in many industries. Even though he had just killed a bill that would have saved jobs, Reagan sought to assure textile employees that he was on their side and insisted that he would not "stand by and watch American workers lose their jobs because other nations do not play by the rules." In fact he did just that. There were 746,000 textile industry workers in 1984 when Congress and Reagan took up the issue of textile tariffs. By the time he left office, the number was down to 728,000. Today, only an estimated 120,000 workers are left, according to the Labor Department.


Despite all the bluster out of Washington demanding fair-trade policies by our trading partners, the United States has not had the political will to back up the rhetoric. To do that in all likelihood would require administering a dose of what the ardent free-traders call protectionism. But our trading partners know that's not going to happen. The pressure from powerful multinational corporations and the uproar from some economists and media types would make any move to establish trade restrictions - even temporarily - next to impossible in Washington.


So if the real problem is the trade deficit, not the budget deficit, why are Congress and the White House fixated on spending rather than trade? Because turning a trade deficit into a surplus could be harmful to the ruling class and the superrich whose investments are spread around the globe. Congress intends to correct the budget deficit, on the other hand, by hammering the middle class and the working poor, slashing Social Security and Medicare. This even though that deficit could be eliminated over time if a few adults sat down and negotiated around a table. Unfortunately, adults are in short supply in Washington"..................LINK

'Global over-the-counter derivatives market is valued at $601 Trillion'

thats T for trillion..........from bloomberg.......

"The Michigan State Housing Development Authority, which sued Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) in bankruptcy court over derivatives transactions, said it is seeking to move its suit to a higher court.

The Lehman bankruptcy judge’s interpretation of swap contracts is “surpassingly broad” and requires U.S. District Court review because it has ramifications for international securities markets, the authority said yesterday in court papers. The global over-the-counter derivatives market is valued at $601 trillion by the Bank for International Settlements"...........LINK

'Counting to a trillion: Think eons, ages, epochs'

from weblogs.baltimoresun...........

"The national debt is $14 trillion. That is a lot of money. Even a trillion is a lot of money. I learned how much after reading this calculation by former math teacher Edward Hopkins, husband of my colleague Jamie Smith Hopkins. You could win trillions of bar bets by asking: How long would it take to count to a trillion?

How much is a trillion?

It's not easy to understand large numbers like billions and trillions, yet we hear about them all the time when people are discussing the economy.

What would happen if you tried to count to one trillion out loud?
Assuming five syllables per second and accounting for the fact that larger numbers have more syllables, I came up with an estimate.

Counting to 10 will take two seconds.

You will reach a hundred in about one minute. After 18 minutes you will hit a thousand. To get to a million takes 700 hours.

Now we're getting to the point where the time is getting too large to easily comprehend. Let's make counting a full-time job of eight hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year. Counting to a million would take about 18 weeks, or from January to the first week in May. To reach 10 million would require four years of counting. If you started young and retired after 48 years of counting, you'd be at 100 million.

To continue we're going to need new counters to carry on the project.
If we employ each person for 50 years, we'll need a succession of 10 more people for a total of 11 lifetimes just to count to a billion.

Archaeologists believe the human race invented counting about 50,000 years ago. Counting to a trillion would take 15 times longer that that"..........(link)