scary thought of the day
Sunday, February 10th, 2008 by adminWith all this talk of a stimulus package, I’ve been thinking about the national debt. (Yeah, I’m really a wet blanket aren’t I?) The national debt is currently 9.245 trillion dollars. More accuracy is not possible, because it will have grown before I can finish typing this post. To put this in perspective, the national debt is 6 and a half times larger that the total amount of money in circulation!1 If congress sucked the money from every wallet, bank vault, and checking account in the country, that would still not pay for even a sixth of the national debt.
Divided up by person, every American is about $30,000 in the hole due to the national debt. (Before you total up how much your household owes, remember that this includes children and people who don’t earn any income).
The debt is 2 and a half times larger than the combined market capitalization of the 20 largest US companies.2
footnote 1: when defining “all money in circulation”, I’m using the M1 definition, which includes all cash (bills or coins), plus transactional bank accounts (such as checking accounts).
footnote 2: I’m defining company size by market cap.
