“Gentlemen… the National Debt… is paid.”
That sentence has been uttered in Washington DC exactly one time ever, by a Senator announcing that the US government was officially debt free.
That was on January 8, 1835 when the debt that the United States government had accrued since its birth was finally paid off.
Never again would the United States be debt free.
It took 174 years for the debt to rack up to a mind boggling $11 TRILLION in 2009.
And then it took only ten years to balloon ANOTHER $11 trillion.
Today the national debt is larger than the entire economy of the USA, $22 trillion.
It took 147 years to get a trillion dollars into debt. The USA now routinely adds at least $1 trillion in debt every 365 days.
And why exactly are we adding all this debt? These are the good times!
The economy has been growing for a decade. The stock market is pumping up to all time highs. Almost every asset class is practically bursting with wealth. We’ve even seen record tax revenues.
And still, routine spending is a trillion dollars more than the government collects.
Any semblance of financial restraint is not even an afterthought on politicians’, or their constituents’, mind.
This is really insane.
Back in 2009, people were actually talking about how troubling the debt was… when it was half of what it is now.
A 2009 Forbes article[1] is almost adorable as it predicts the US debt will be $14 trillion by 2019. Only about 50% off… and still, the author was extremely concerned. As he should have been.
As we all should be, even...