Mon 10 Nov 2008
Wonder how big our national debt is? The Treasury will be happy to tell you on their website.
Negatives: The number is $10.496 trillion, and is up $800 billion in the last 2 months or so… and it doesn’t include the future obligations of the governments, Fannie and Freddie, PBGC and FDIC backstops, and it includes only the things that it currently considers debt.
On the other hand, over $4.2 trillion of the debt is owed to itself… a fact I often forget. That accounts for future purchasing power for Social Security and Medicare systems… which I have a feeling will be legislated away in some form in some future crisis.