National Debt to the Penny, $6,939,710,592,770.24.

[lfairban]

This is an interesting web site:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

It looks like Bush has already increased the National Debt almost as much as Clinton did.

[KA]

1. man

we realy need to cut spending

[54anickel]

2. Geez, it's a lot scarier looking that way than 6.9 trillion n/t

[ramapo]

3. It's YOUR debt, right?

Just like it's YOUR money as told by the little shyster.

[Orrin_73]

4. Actually the debt is a bit higher

just a few billions more but not much.
debt_clock


deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
kucinich.us
sharpton2004.org

[lfairban]

5. Isn't the debt clock an estimate based on the average increase?

It doesn't make that much difference. The US treasurary value will probably rise soon to the clock value. For some reason it has been going down over the last few days.

[porkrind]

6. Wow !!!

If there are about 283 million people in the U.S., that means each of us owes about $24,500.

That sucks! x(

You economic gurus out there correct Me if I'm wrong, but I think that since our money is essentially fiat money, being unbacked by any physical entity of value like gold, this means that they just print up more when they need it. They then add the same amount to the deficit. This de-values all the other dollars in the economy, so they have effectively taxed us with a promise to pay it back. Is this right?

[lfairban]

7. Not exactly,

but I don't remember the mechanism exactly.

Remember that printed money is only a small fraction of the existing number of dollars. Most of it is in accounts, it exists only as numbers in banking data bases.

As I recall, increasing the total number of dollars has something to do with one of the treasury instruments. If it increases too fast, inflation will spiral out of control.

The value of the dollar in relation to gold or other currencies is affected mostly by interest rates. Low interest rates with respect to what investors could obtain in other countries will cause the dollar to decline.

If it were as easy as printing money, the government would never be in debt. The Federal government needs to balance their books just like states, corporations and individuals do. Otherwise, they will be at the mercy of creditors. Cities, states and countries have defaulted on their obligations, or come close to it, and it has an adverse impact on their credibility and ability to finance things in the future.