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US Debt Record:$7,995,462,387,011.49

224 Posts
Pagina: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 12 »» | Laatste | Omlaag ↓
  3. [verwijderd] 17 oktober 2005 11:14
    Op de schuld an sich is ook niet zoveel kritiek, deze is lechts het resultaat van...
    Het gaat nu om het giga financieringstekort in combinatie met een giga handelstekort. Daarnaast speelt mee dat de schuld van de VS voor een aanzienlijk deel in handen is van China-Japan. Als deze landen om welke reden dan ook besluiten om minder schuldpapier af te nemen of om schuldpapier te gaan verkopen is het leed niet te overzien. Dan knalt de rente omhoog en niet meer met kwartprocenpunten...
  4. [verwijderd] 17 oktober 2005 11:52
    Begrotingstekort VS loopt terug

    WASHINGTON (ANP) - Het tekort op de begroting van de Amerikaanse regering is in het eind september afgelopen boekjaar 2005 teruggelopen met 94 miljard dollar tot 319 miljard dollar (265,33 miljard euro). Dat heeft het Amerikaanse ministerie van Financiën vrijdag bekendgemaakt.
    Het lagere tekort is vooral een gevolg van de hoger dan verwachte belastinginkomsten, aldus de Amerikaanse minister van Financiën John Snow. Deze inkomsten kwamen uit op 2,154 biljoen dollar (1,791 biljoen euro) tegen 1,880 biljoen dollar (1,563 biljoen euro) in het jaar daarvoor.
    Daar stond tegenover dat de Amerikaanse regering ook meer geld uitgaf dit jaar. In totaal bedroegen de uitgaven 2,473 biljoen dollar (2,056 biljoen euro) in het fiscale jaar 2005. In 2004 kwamen deze uit op 2,293 biljoen dollar (1,907 biljoen euro).
    Het gerapporteerde begrotingstekort staat gelijk aan 2,6 procent van het bruto binnenlands product (bbp) van de VS in 2005, de som van alle geproduceerde goederen en diensten. Het percentage over de afgelopen veertig jaar bedroeg gemiddeld 2,3.

    Er is inderdaad een groot handelstekort, maar van een groot financieringstekort kan je niet meer spreken.

    Vg,
    Dave
  6. pcrs7 17 oktober 2005 12:12
    quote:

    BJL schreef:

    Dan doet de VS het met 65% overheidsschuld/gdp een stuk beter dan EU (>70%) en Japan (>165%).

    Overigens is bijna de helft van US staatsschuld in handen van VS federale overheid zelf.

    Overheid is wel kleiner daar, dus dan is 65% weer wat meer. Tegen die schuld die ze zelf in bezit hebben staan ook weer verplichtingen (medicare etc)
    -pcrs
  8. [verwijderd] 17 oktober 2005 15:52
    quote:

    pcrs7 schreef:

    [quote=BJL]
    Dan doet de VS het met 65% overheidsschuld/gdp een stuk beter dan EU (>70%) en Japan (>165%).

    Overigens is bijna de helft van US staatsschuld in handen van VS federale overheid zelf.

    [/quote]
    Overheid is wel kleiner daar, dus dan is 65% weer wat meer. Tegen die schuld die ze zelf in bezit hebben staan ook weer verplichtingen (medicare etc)
    -pcrs
    ja- onze overheid heeft ook AOW verplichtingen, maar die zijn niet gefund met staatsleningen noch staan ze als verplichting genoteerd....
  9. [verwijderd] 10 november 2005 15:22
    Trade gap widens to new record in Sept.
    Exports have sharpest decline since 9/11

    By Greg Robb, MarketWatchLast Update: 8:32 AM ET Nov. 10, 2005

    WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Natural disasters and labor strife combined to push the U.S. trade deficit into record territory in September, a government report showed Thursday.

    The U.S. trade deficit widened by 11.4% in September to a record $66.1 billion, the Commerce Department said.

    A surge in energy imports needed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita laid waste to the energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast in September boosted imports. At the same time, a strike a Boeing Co. sharply cut the number of airplanes exported in the month.

    Even though economists had anticipated these factors, the trade deficit in September was well above expectations. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected the deficit to widen to $61.5 billion. See Economic Calendar.

    The August trade deficit was revised slightly to $59.3 billion from the initial estimate of $59.0 billion.

    The September trade data will be a drag the third quarter GDP growth rate, initially reported at a 3.8% annualized rate. The deficit for September is above government estimates that were included in the growth estimate. A larger trade deficit by itself would dampen growth. But the drag from the trade sector is likely to be offset by a faster pace of inventory growth in the third quarter than the government initially estimated.

    Imports rose in September while exports had their largest decline since 9/11.

    Imports rose 2.4% to $171.3 billion in September. Exports fell 2.6% to $105.2 billion.

    Exports of goods alone fell 4.3% to $73.4 billion. The largest drop came in exports of capital goods, which fell 7.4% to $29.1 billion. Exports of civilian aircraft fell 72% to $925 million.

    According to Boeing, only two planes were delivered in September, down from 25 in August due to the strike.

    Imports of goods alone rose 2.7% to $144.5 billion. All categories on imports rose except autos. Imports of industrial supplies, including natural gas, fuel oil and other petroleum products rose 6.2% to $46.9 billion.

    The petroleum deficit widened 6.8% to a record $22.2 billion.

    The value of U.S. oil imports fell to $16.0 billion in September from $17.2 billion in August. The price of a barrel of oil rose to a record $57.32 in September, but the quantity of crude oil imports fell to 278.5 million barrels, the lowest since February 2003.

    The trade deficit with China widened to a record $20.1 billion in September from $15.5 billion in the same month last year. The trade gap with China rose to $146.3 billion in the first nine months of the year, up from $114.3 billion in the same period last year.

    The U.S. also set record trade deficits with Canada, South/Central America and OPEC.

    In a separate report, the Labor Department said jobless claims rose slightly in the latest week. Read MarketWatch coverage.

    And the government said import prices eased in October. See full story.


    Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.
  11. [verwijderd] 10 november 2005 19:23
    This morning's release of October import price data and September trade data from the Labor Department and the Commerce Department, respectively, again produced disquieting numbers. In the case of the trade data, Labor reported a September deficit of $66.1 billion, the largest monthly shortfall in history -- and the largest by a wide margin, too!
    _____

    October Import Prices

    This morning's release from the Labor Department indicated that overall import prices fell 0.3% during October, good news on prima facie examination. However, prices excluding petroleum imports rose 0.8% during the month, on top of September's revised 1.0% increase.

    Import prices for petroleum were down 4.4% in October, following a revised 8.0% rise in September.

    Year over year, the price of all imports rose 8.1%. Excluding petroleum imports, the figure was 3.7%, tying December 2004's 3.7% rise for the highest year-over-year increase during the last several months. To find a higher result, you must go all the way back to August 1995, when import prices, excluding petroleum, were up 4.0 year over year.

    September Trade Results

    This morning's release from the Commerce Department indicated that the nation's trade deficit (goods and services) in September rose to a record $66.11 billion, up $6.76 billion or a whopping 11.4% from a revised August deficit of $59.35 billion. (August's shortfall was originally reported as $59.03 billion.)

    Hurricane Katrina had an important negative impact on September exports, which were down almost $2.8 billion or 2.6% from August.

    The September deficit not only set a record, it eclipsed the former record by a very substantial $5.69 billion, or 9.4%! The top three reported monthly deficits now are:

    September 2005 $66.11 billion
    February 2005 $60.42 billion
    November 2004 $58.98 billion

    In September, the value of crude oil imports actually were down almost $1.9 billion from August.

    For 2005's first nine months, the trade deficit totaled $529.793 billion, an increase of $81.433 billion or 18.2% from 2004's comparable figure.
  13. [verwijderd] 8 december 2005 14:57
    Gung Ho,

    Het probeem met dit soort bedragen is dat het een ieders abstractie te boven gaat, of je nu 800 ziljoen in het rood staat of 1600 ziljoen, het zegt niemand nog iets. Overigens, niemand lost nog iets af, zonde van het geld.

    Wat mij nog het meest frappeert is dat zoveel beleggers de data-propaganda voor waar aannemen. Blijkbaar werkt het zo! Go with the flow.

    Dutch
  14. [verwijderd] 3 januari 2006 15:03
    January 03, 2006 Hybrid Loan Time Bomb
    by Mike Shedlock

    The HeraldTribune is reporting the clock is winding down on the Hybrid Loan and Sub-Prime mortgage time bombs.

    Starting in 2006 and accelerating into 2007, as much as $2.5 trillion worth of the fancy mortgages called "hybrids" are coming to the end of the free-lunch part of the deal. Economists are still trying to put numbers on this reset factor, particularly when it comes to the riskiest home loans, referred to as "sub-prime."

    "We don't have enough data to know how big a problem this will be," said David Berson, chief economist at Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage packager.

    The ticking clock

    Sarasota's John Barron is typical of the new crop of homeowner-investors. He and his wife, Lauren Wood, are sitting on big profits at two 2004 purchases in the up-and-coming Gillespie Park neighborhood, close to downtown Sarasota.

    But the couple made their big moves using ARMs that are about to be reset. If they don't act soon, their monthly bills will rise by hundreds of dollars per month. They used two separate three-year, interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgages from SunTrust Bank to buy the homes within the past two years.

    "Besides the two ARMs, we also took out a home equity line on the Seventh Street house to put down a deposit on the Fifth Street house. There was no cash that we had in our pockets to put down on the Fifth Street house. All we had was our shining credit record. And the faith that the banks have in this real estate market that allows you to borrow 100 percent."

    Barron and Wood have a lot of company, says Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago-based Northern Trust.

    With possibly $2.5 trillion in household debt that is going to be repriced higher "the household debt-service ratio is bound to climb to new highs," Kasriel wrote last month. "Asset bubbles are characterized by cheap credit. Usually what bursts a bubble is higher cost of credit, because that is what inflates the bubble, is cheap credit."

    At Sarasota's Integrity Mortgage Group, ARMs have far and away taken over as the most popular. Five years ago, there was only an occasional one-year or five-year ARM. "Out of 200 loans you'd do 10 adjustables," Integrity President Jason Thurber said. "In the last year, I've probably done five fixed-rate loans, 30- or 15-year, out of 150 loans. So all the rest are some kind of hybrid."

    The big picture looks similar, says SMR Research of Hackettstown, N.J., which regularly surveys lenders who make 90 percent of America's home loans.

    "I can say that the first half of this year, ARM share was 55 percent nationally," said SMR's George Yacik. "For the full year 2004, it was 50 percent." Making matters worse, it is the the sub-prime lenders issuing the most adjustable-rate mortgages. With those who participate in the survey, 80 percent of their loans were ARMs compared to 55 percent in the broader market.

    Fannie Mae looked at 2002-2004 loan data to determine what portion of the existing loan pool would be "adjusted," and when. Fewer than 10 percent of the conventional conforming loans will reset in 2006-2007, but nearly two-thirds of sub-prime loans will. That is because a large portion of the sub-prime loans are two-year adjustables, says Berson, the Fannie Mae chief economist.

    Berson offered a typical example of what the industry calls a "2-28," an ARM in which the interest rate is fixed for the first two years and then adjusts regularly for the next 28 to whatever index the loan calls for. The average yearly cap on this loan is 2.3 percentage points per year.

    Roughly speaking, a consumer's monthly bill could rise from $330 to as much as $1,425 to $1,755.

    Fannie Mae expects sub-prime loans to be reset en masse this year with that trend continuing into 2007.

    But over at the Mortgage Bankers Association, senior economist Michael Fratantoni is more interested in the five-year adjustables that were issued during the refi craze of 2002-03. That's a large crop that will sprout in 2007.

    "The estimate is that in 2007, more than a trillion dollars worth of hybrids are going to hit their first reset date," he said.

    That one chunk of hybrid loans represents 12 percent of the $8.8 trillion in single-family home loans outstanding nationwide.

    Like many ARM borrowers, Barron, the Gillespie Park buyer, is not really sure how much his payment will go up when the loans are reset. The new rate is a moving target. "Come year four, they adjust it based on the prime rate," he said. "It is like prime rate plus two, or, I can't remember exactly what the adjustment is."

    At Washington Mutual's Bee Ridge Road office in Sarasota, 25 percent of current applications are for option ARMs, says senior loan consultant Mike Bangasser.

    For customers with good credit, there is only about a half-percentage point difference between the 5.75 percent rate on an option ARM and the 6.375 percent rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

    So why bother with the ARM?

    This is the key: The minimum payment today on a $200,000 option ARM would be only $678, a little more than half the cost on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. On that $200,000 loan, a 30-year fixed would be $1,248 per month in principal and interest. With the option ARM, there are three other payment choices: $958, $1,167 or $1,661.

    The $678 payment doesn't even cover all the interest, Bangasser acknowledged.

    He guesstimated that if somebody borrowed $250,000 on a typical option ARM and made minimal payments for five years they would be "going to be in the hole 15 percent to 20 percent of your original balance, meaning $285,000 to $300,000."

    "You don't have to have negative am," Grande said. "As long as you make that fully-indexed payment, you're fine. But most folks aren't doing that. They take the easy way out, get themselves in trouble."

    There is one more ingredient to add to this layer cake, and it is one that barely occurs to most borrowers today: What if someday, loans were difficult to get?

    "Consumers have become so accustomed to very liquid mortgage markets, where credit is available for almost any circumstance, that they are not aware this is unusual in the market," HSH's Gumbinger warned. "Somewhat tighter credit availability and somewhat higher interest rates are much more normal."

    "Borrowers think they can always refinance. That is not always a safe bet."

    It's hard to know where to start with this kind of nonsense. But people still insist there is no bubble. That this type of activity occurs routinely is clear evidence of a credit lending bubble. Given that the credit lending bubble has grossly affected home prices, it should be obvious there is a housing bubble as well. Day in and day out however, someone writes an article telling us why this time is different and how affordable housing really is.

    We have been talking about a possible "credit event" when these loans reset, so I guess we do not have much longer to see. It may not be a "big bang" however, as these loans are scattered throughout 2006 and 2007.

    It is amazing to me that people in these loans are nearly clueless as to what their loans might get reset to. Barron's loan adjusts to prime rate +2 or something like that but he "can't remember exactly what the adjustment is." Yikes that is 9.25%, on three properties! He has three 100% loans based solely on "shining credit" and someone stupid enough to make the loan. P
  15. [verwijderd] 3 januari 2006 15:05
    It is amazing to me that people in these loans are nearly clueless as to what their loans might get reset to. Barron's loan adjusts to prime rate +2 or something like that but he "can't remember exactly what the adjustment is." Yikes that is 9.25%, on three properties! He has three 100% loans based solely on "shining credit" and someone stupid enough to make the loan. Perhaps a better way of stating it is some hedge fund or mortgage player or investor is stupid enough to take that risk for perhaps an extra ¼ point or ½ point over treasuries. Is that a good deal? I think not and I fully expect to see some hedge funds and/or leveraged reits to blow up over it too.


    Mike Shedlock / Mish
    globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

  16. [verwijderd] 14 januari 2006 10:09
    America's pension time bomb
    Commentary: Workers, employers, taxpayers, governments. Meet the key players in the coming battle.
    By Geoffrey Colvin, FORTUNE senior editor-at-large
    January 13, 2006: 11:03 AM EST

    NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Some of the nastiest conflicts in America's future have recently begun to reveal themselves. Let's call them, broadly, the pension wars.

    They will be fought on a wide range of battlefields, involving not just workers and their employers but also governments at all levels, regulators, accountants and taxpayers. And these wars will be bitter -- because the combatants will be desperate.

    A hint of what's to come could be seen in the New York City transit strike. Most of America didn't notice exactly what sparked the first such strike in 25 years, costing businesses, individuals and the city hundreds of millions of dollars. The answer is pensions. The transit authority and the workers were agreed on virtually everything except how much new employees would contribute toward their pensions--6 percent of wages vs. 2 percent -- and neither side felt it could give an inch on that.

    The reasons illustrate the larger problem. The transit authority, like many private and public employers, is watching its pension costs rocket as longer-living retirees increase in number. That burden will become unbearable. On the other side, union members are watching employers nationwide dumping or cutting their pensions just as Social Security starts to look shaky. They figure retirement security is the one thing they cannot sacrifice. Result: war.

    New York's transit strike also illustrates an important reason that the pension wars weren't headed off long ago. The truth about pensions has been systematically hidden, with all parties collaborating in the deceit. Public-employee pensions have never been accounted for like those run by private employers. No government is required to tell you its pension liability the way, say, General Motors is, on the theory that governments can always just extract more money from the taxpayers to pay retirees.

    But this year the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which sets the rules for the public sector, is changing its regulations. State and local governments will now have to reveal their pension liabilities, which may be underfunded by $1 trillion or more.

    Private employers, while required to account for their pensions, have played sophisticated games with the numbers -- all within the rules. For example, they can assume the pension fund increased in value when it actually declined. They can assume it will continue increasing in value at a rate that is almost certainly way too high. They can even jack up their reported profits based on that assumed, though nonexistent, increase in pension-fund value.

    But eventually actual dollars must be paid out, a prospect that has seriously spooked private employers. Just this month IBM (Research) announced that it would join the long list of companies (Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola) that have frozen their pension plans, instead increasing 401(k) contributions for employees. And the 18-month negotiation between UPS and its pilots has come down to just two points: whether outsourced pilots overseas must be union members, and (you guessed it) pensions.

    The pension wars will inevitably include Congress, which is working out a way to increase funding for the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., now deeply in the red as huge companies like UAL, parent of United Air Lines, dump their pension plans on it. Since the PBGC is an insurer, the logical move is to raise the premiums companies pay, especially for the riskiest plans.

    But if Congress mandates a premium hike, as it probably will, then more companies will just dump their plans on the PBGC, redoubling the need for more funds, leading to more premium hikes, and so on. If you can see any way taxpayers will not get billed for a giant bailout, please e-mail Congress immediately.

    And then there's the greatest pension crisis of all: Social Security. We've stayed in denial thanks to the so-called trust fund, that magical place where the plan's annual surpluses are sent to be invested until we need them. But since those surpluses must by law be invested in government bonds, they have simply been handed over to the U.S. Treasury and spent by Congress.

    The trust fund is in fact meaningless, a bit of marketing hooey cooked up in the '30s. When Social Security's annual surpluses end in just six or seven years, the battle over whose ox to gore in order to cover the plan's obligations will be truly epic.

    The hard reality is that for decades we haven't told ourselves the truth about pensions. Now, as the first baby-boomers turn 60, we must finally confront reality -- and absolutely no one will like it. In New York last month, transit workers and management compromised; employees will make small contributions toward health insurance premiums but will keep one of the richest retirement deals around.

    Soon those compromises simply won't be affordable. And that's when the pension wars will explode.

    --------------------------------


  17. [verwijderd] 7 maart 2006 08:56
    Treasury Department Moves to Avoid Debt Limit

    By Martin Crutsinger The Associated Press
    via The Washington Post Monday, March 6, 2006
    www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
    dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030600635_pf.html

    WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress on
    Monday that the administration has now taken "all prudent and legal
    actions," including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit.

    In a letter to Congress, Snow urged lawmakers to pass a new debt
    ceiling immediately to avoid the nation's first-ever default on its obligations.

    "I know that you share the president's and my commitment to
    maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government," Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate.

    Treasury officials, briefing congressional aides last week, said
    that the government will run out of maneuvering room to keep from
    exceeding the current limit sometime during the week of March 20.

    Snow in his letter notified lawmakers that Treasury would begin
    tapping the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, which
    Treasury officials said would provide a "few billion" dollars in
    extra borrowing ability.

    Treasury officials also announced that on Friday they had used the $15 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a reserve that the
    Treasury secretary has that is normally used to smooth out volatile movements in the value of the dollar in currency markets.

    Treasury has also been taking investments out of a $65.3 billion
    government pension fund known as the G-fund.

    Officials have said that once the debt limit is raised, the
    investments taken out of the pension funds would be replaced and any
    lost interest payments would be made up. The formal title for the G-
    fund is the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal
    Employees Retirement System.

    Democrats hope to use the upcoming congressional debate over raising
    the debt limit to highlight what they see as the failings of the
    administration's economic program with its emphasis on sweeping tax cuts.

    An actual default on the debt, a situation when the government
    misses making payments to current bondholders, is a doomsday
    scenario considered highly unlikely given what it would do to the government's credit rating.

    It is expected that after intense debate, Congress will approve an
    increase in the current $8.18 trillion debt limit by perhaps $781 billion.

    But Rep. Charles Rangel, the top Democrat on the House Ways and
    Means Committee, said Monday that any further increase in the debt
    limit should be tied to legislation that would get future deficits under control.

    "Simply raising the limit on George W. Bush's credit card and
    crossing our fingers won't solve anything," Rangel, D-N.Y., said in
    a statement. "Any long-term debt limit increase must be accompanied
    by a serious effort to bring our budget back to the balance we
    achieved under the Clinton administration."

    Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto said it was critical for
    Congress to act before leaving for a spring recess on March 17. He
    said Snow planned a number of meetings with lawmakers this week to
    discuss the urgency of taking action.

    The administration has sent Congress a budget that on paper would
    cut the deficit in half by 2009, the year President Bush leaves office.

    But Democrats contend the administration met its deficit-reduction
    goal only by leaving out major spending items such as the full costs
    of the Iraq war. They say the deficit will not improve unless Bush
    abandons his effort to make his first-term tax cuts permanent.

    Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said last week that under President Bush
    the total of the deficits has increased by $3 trillion, a 40 percent increase from where the national debt -- the total of previous deficits -- stood when Bush took office in January 2001.
  18. [verwijderd] 8 maart 2006 16:22
    Retirement Fund Tapped to Avoid National Debt Limit

    By Stephen Barr Wednesday, March 8, 2006; D04

    The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month's decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees.

    In a letter to Congress this week, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said he would rely on the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund to avoid bumping up against the statutory debt limit. He said the Treasury is suspending investments and will redeem a portion of the money credited to the fund.

    Once Congress raises the debt limit, the Treasury will "restore all due interest and principal" to the pension fund as soon as possible, Snow said. He made a similar promise when the Treasury announced that reinvestment of some assets in the Thrift Savings Plan's government securities fund, or G Fund, had been suspended.

    The civil service trust fund will provide the Treasury with several billion dollars for extra borrowing. The fund had an estimated balance of about $655 billion at the start of the year, but only a small portion of that is available to the Treasury because of the statutes restricting the fund's use during "debt issuance suspension" periods. The G Fund has assets of about $65.3 billion, and all are available for Treasury's use.

    The Treasury has leaned on federal employee retirement funds in past years when officials worried about a possible default on the national debt, and most federal employees take it in stride. Still, many employees object to the financial maneuvers, arguing that they amount to a raid on their personal accounts.

    Colleen M. Kelley , president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said last month that federal employees should not have their pension accounts "used as a rainy day fund. . . . No private-sector employer would ever be allowed to do this."

    Snow wrote to Congress that his maneuvers will buy time until mid-March and urged lawmakers "to pass a debt limit increase immediately." He said the Treasury "has now taken all prudent and legal actions to avoid reaching the statutory debt limit."

  19. [verwijderd] 15 maart 2006 15:30
    How Government Debt Grows by Ron Paul

    Today our national debt stands at $8.2 trillion, which represents about $26,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Interestingly, the legal debt limit is only $8.18 trillion, a figure that was reached a few weeks ago. This means the Treasury department must ask Congress to raise the debt limit very soon, most likely as part of a larger bill so it can be hidden from the American people.

    Raising the debt ceiling is nothing new. Congress raised it many times over the last 15 years, despite the supposed “surpluses” of the Clinton years. Those single-year surpluses were based on accounting tricks that treated Social Security funds as general revenues. In reality the federal government ran deficits throughout the 1990s, and the federal debt rose steadily.

    Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made it easier for Congress to obscure the extent of federal debt. He endorsed a change in the law that redefined Social Security and veterans pensions. In reality those obligations are debts, just like any other bill that must be paid in the future. But Mr. Greenspan urged renaming these obligations “intergovernment accounts,” which magically changed them from debts to “accrued liabilities.” This semantic shift frees up lots of room under the debt ceiling for more borrowing.

    Debt and credit, wisely used, can be proper tools for individuals and businesses. In a free society, however, we can never view expansion as a proper goal for government. Unlike a private business, our federal government should not be seeking out new ways to increase the scope of its dubious “services.” Any government that consumes at least 25% of the American economy and still can't balance its books is a government that vastly overspends.

    I disagree with the supply-side argument that government debt doesn't matter. The issue is not whether the Treasury has sufficient current income to service the debt, but rather whether a government that spends so much ultimately will destroy its own economy. Debt does matter, especially to future generations that will be asked to pay for our extravagance.

    When government borrows money, the actual borrowers – big-spending administrations and politicians – never have to pay it back. Remember, administrations come and go, members of congress become highly paid lobbyists, and bureaucrats retire with safe pensions. The benefits of deficit spending are enjoyed immediately by politicians, who trade pork for votes and enjoy adulation for promising to cure every social ill. The bills always come due later, however. Nobody ever looks back and says, “Congressman so-and-so got us into this mess when he voted for all that spending 20 years ago.”

    For government, the federal budget is essentially a credit card with no spending limit, billed to somebody else. We hardly should be surprised that Congress racks up huge amounts of debt! By contrast, responsible people restrain their borrowing because they will have to pay the money back. It's time for American taxpayers to understand that every dollar will have to be repaid. We should have the courage to face our grandchildren knowing that we have done all we can to end the government spending spree.

    March 14, 2006

    Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

  20. jrxs4all 15 maart 2006 15:45
    quote:

    Gung Ho schreef:

    How Government Debt Grows by Ron Paul

    Today our national debt stands at $8.2 trillion, which represents about $26,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.

    Bent u allen in voor een staaltje lagere school rekenkunde ? OK ...

    US Debt 8,2 trillion
    US GDP (2005) 12,88 trillion
    US Debt% of GDP 64,2%

    2004 Debt% of GDP
    USA 65%

    Germany 65,8%
    France 67,7%
    Belgium 96,2%
    Italy 105,6%
    Greece 112%

    De laatste 5 zijn Euro landen, waarom lezen we hier nooit van die fabeltjes over de ineenstorting van de Euro, zoals we die wel aldoor moeten lezen over de ineenstorting van de dollar en de USA in het algemeen ...

    JR

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