Monday, October 31, 2011

Scary Debt Figures

by Emily Skarbek


Scary Debt Figures


  by Emily Skarbek

The United States will officially pass the 100 percent debt-to-GDP line on Halloween. This is the first time this has ever happened since World War II. As Zero Hedge reports,
We decided to dig into the actual numbers (cancelling out the per capital denominator as it is the same on both sides of the equation) and came to a very disturbing revelation: as of today, total US Debt, is $14.942 trillion (source), obviously an all time high. Q2 GDP as was reported by the BEA three weeks ago, was $15.012 trillion in current dollars. In other words, the spread between total GDP and total debt has now collapsed to an all time low $70 billion. Incidentally, this number was $1.8 trillion at the beginning of 2010. Then we decided to take a quick look at the upcoming bond issuance and find that tomorrow the Treasury will announce approximately $99 billion in 2, 5 and 7 Year bonds to be auctioned off October 25 through 27... With a very appropriate settlement date: October 31, elsewhere known as Halloween.



Wow, that is scary! 

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