Forums >Off the Beaten Path>DEBT LIMIT – A Guide to American federal debt made easy
--The debt held by public would always be honored, but the vast portion of the 15 trillion isn't debt held by public and is workable. .
--The debt held by public would always be honored, but the vast portion of the 15 trillion isn't debt held by public and is workable.
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Define "vast portion." I'm pretty sure the debt held by the public is over $11 trillion. That's pretty vast.
Runners run
I am not watching the video. Anything that attempts to explain the national debt &federal budget by analogy to the microeconomic, consumer household misses so many factors (and creates so many red herrings) as to be impossibly irrelevant. GIGO - watch out for it! As far as the more complex analyses, before you listen to anyone's opinions about how we must take (actual) pain now to prevent (predicted) pain later, check out their predictions & public statements over his professional lives - with weights on his more recent (5 & 10 year) track records. When the path forward is unclear, take slow steps. Kill the snakes closest to you. We aren't Greece, Spain, or Ireland. We aren't Iceland. We aren't the Balics. We are the US, and unemployment is high and growth, the 10 year yield, and core inflation are low. Draw your conclusions from logic and not analogy.
As far as debt going poof, examine how we paid off WWII ... Hey, I know that's analogy, but I offer it in rebuttal to other analogy - based arguments. I would not be running for the hills (except for a hill workout).
Another Duke.. Hello :-)
--It isn't a video, merely a CNBC slideshow indicating the top 20 Nations and their Debt to GDP ratios. Would take less than a minute to click through the slides, but it is factual information, and the more information, the better. It isn't biased info or one of those 'youtube' partisan rants, just a CNBC slideshow. ----It just makes me wonder how Switzerland does not make the news, considering that each person's share of their national debt is over $300,000.00 per person. :-) http://www.cnbc.com/id/30308959/The_World039s_Biggest_Debtor_Nations
(((If one of you economics majors could explain to me how a country like Switzerland where each person's share of the nat'l debt is over 300 grand does not make headlines for impending insolvency, please let me know because I don't see how countries with that kind of debt burden avoid a crisis?)))
Also, Mikeymike, concerning who the US govt owes debt to, you are right to quite a degree. More of it public owned than I realized. See, this is a learning experience for us all, myself included.
Here are the facts: (Again, presented in another nice, clean, CNBC slideshow)...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29880401/page/1
The Plan '15 → /// "Run Hard, Live Easy." ∞
KL - you're getting mixed up because you're mixing things up. The CNBC "biggest debtors" stats deal with external debt - that is, all the debt of everyone (people, companies AND goverment) owed to creditors outside the country. This is not the same as public debt (your second link, and what Mikey and pretty much everyone else is referring to).
Swiss public debt is ridiculously GOOD (MTA: to clarify, debt to gdp ratio ~40%). So much so, that they were able to issue negative interest rate bonds last year - yes, people were willing to give the Swiss govt. money to hold their cash (minus 0.62%) to keep it from being lost in the euro vortex.
Swiss external debt is huge because it is a financial center, and external debt includes the debt of all the giant banks that operate in that country - but that has little bearing on swiss solvency.
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and roguesWe're on the road to nowhere, let's find out where it goes