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19 Responses to “A terrifying U.S. debt chart you’ve never seen before”

1. Peggy Venable says:

   November 30, 2011 at 3:03 pm

   We are leaving our children a legacy of spending and debt, not the legacy we want to be leaving. We must take back America. 2012 is the most important election of our lives!

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2. JPW says:

   November 29, 2011 at 5:57 pm

   Why was debt dropping so much between 1934-1944? I assume GDP was not growing. Anyone have an explanation?

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   • SOB says:

     November 30, 2011 at 3:06 pm

     Because only gov’t could borrow money during that time. If you look at the colors you’ll see gov’t spending went up, personal and corperate dropped.

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3. JPW says:

   November 29, 2011 at 5:56 pm

   Why was debt dropping so much from ~1934-1944? I assume GDP wasn’t growing during that time.

   Anyone have an explanation?

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4. Warren Bonesteel says:

   November 29, 2011 at 12:55 pm

   If you haven’t seen that chart – or it’s like – before. You haven’t been paying attention.

   If you really want to embrace the doom, start with “The Fourth Turning” by Strauss and Howe. Read “Winter is Coming” by Jim Goulding. In order to induce real nightmares, read “The Rise and Fall of Civilization,” by Miller, Joubert and Butler, which can be found online.

   Day to day news on the reality can be found at The Market Ticker, a blog by Karl Denninger. For more details, as was mentioned earlier, try Zero Hedge.

   We’re boned, folks. We have to slash government and government spending by at last fifty per cent, just to have a slight possibility of a chance of getting through this…and we have to do it now. Immediately. Today. (obviously, that isn’t going to happen…)

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5. jukin says:

   November 29, 2011 at 11:58 am

   I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.

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6. Frankenstein Government says:

   November 29, 2011 at 11:47 am

   Meanwhile, with the world swimming in debt, the kleptocracy and the algos continue to send our stock markets higher. Because, doncha know, happy days are right around the corner. (They’ve been telling you that for 4 years now)

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7. DoverPro says:

   November 29, 2011 at 11:15 am

   This is past frightening, almost to panic.

   Doom is on the way, just a question of when it will strike.

   Prepare. It will not end well.

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   • Paul Smith says:

     November 30, 2011 at 5:39 pm

     It will for those of us who believe . To put that another way, you cannot kill a Christian; you can only change his address.

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8. Kasper Hauser says:

   November 29, 2011 at 10:20 am

   “Its just money; its made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It’s not wrong. And it’s certainly no different today than its ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987–92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It’s all just the same thing over and over; we can’t help ourselves. And you and I can’t control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there’s ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same.”

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9. Andre says:

   November 29, 2011 at 10:09 am

   Robert, you are 100% right.
   Dagan, the difference is that personal debt is PERSONAL. Govt is spending money that isn’t theirs to spend, most would consider that theft. They are breaking the trust of those that hired them. If a corporation had done what they have and continue to, people would be headed for prison. Gordon Gekko goes to prison for insider trading, but not Nanci Pelosi. Another big difference is that if my family goes bankrupt it doesnt bring down my neighbor. And also, if Im paying interest where does that money go? It is the income stream for other Americans. How much of that household debt is a mortgage? Student loan? We definitely have more debt than we probably should, but broken down and put in context, household debt is not the problem. Household debt is not in any way bringing down the economy, if anything it gives incentive to work to those who might not be otherwise motivated.

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10. Anon E. Mouse says:

    November 27, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    Could we please see real GDP (on the right Y-axis), imposed over the graph as a heavy-bold line. Thanks.

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    • Craig says:

      November 29, 2011 at 9:03 am

      I think GDP would be a straight line at the 100% line. This graph is relative to GDP.

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      • Weekend At Bernankes says:

        November 29, 2011 at 12:05 pm

        Correct. Or should I say, “Baaaaaaaam!” I suspect Anon was searching for something to reinforce his normalcy bias.

        I’d argue that GSE debt should be considered government debt in the context of this post. In 2008 the suspicions of many were confirmed in FNMA and FMCC.

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11. Dagan Heaps says:

    November 23, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

    How can we complain about Government debt when the people who run our Households, Corporations, and Financial institutions also make the same lousy decisions as our political leaders? Are we not one and the same?

    Overarching debt must surely be a fundamental premise of the human condition, and one for which no political answer exists because anyone with the discipline, wisdom, and foresight to use it properly or avoid it altogether would almost certainly be viewed as an outcast, and by extension, completely unelectable.

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    • Abdul Haqq says:

      November 29, 2011 at 12:59 pm

      Nonsense, I have NO debt because I made sensible financial decisions.

      Reply
    • MightyMonarch says:

      November 29, 2011 at 7:10 pm

      Perhaps Americans would be more inclined to save and not borrow if not for the following two issues:

      1. The Federal Reserve policy of holding interest rates near zero, which destroys the average American’s ability to save for retirement and builds up unsustainable bubbles in housing and education.

      2. Confiscatory tax rates at the federal, state, and local levels of government, making single-income families next to impossible to maintain and destroying any hope of citizens relying on their own nest egg and not the Ponzi scheme of Social Security/Medicare.

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12. Robert A. Hall says:

    November 23, 2011 at 1:46 pm

    Very scary, but they left out the unfunded liabilities of all levels of government, which the NCPA estimates at $211 Trillion. So it’s really about 14 times worse than this. Saying the debt is “unsustainable” is like saying that someone shot in the heart and head is “not viable.” Government cannot possible redeem its trillions of dollars in pledges, as both parties bought votes for the past 30 years with borrowed money. I fear we are facing a fiscal collapse, followed by a social and political collapse. It’s not just Obama driving us towards the cliff, though when he got behind the wheel, he floored the gas pedal. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.

    Robert A. Hall
    Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
    (All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans)
    For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com

    Reply
    • Peggy Venable says:

      November 30, 2011 at 3:06 pm

      You are so right! Include OPEB and we will see just how deep the hole we have dug for ourselves and our children. It seems local and state elected officials are always willing to vote for more benefits foe public workers, knowing that when the bill comes due, they will be long gone…likely in Congress!

      Reply