Our National Debt

I am sure that the Harvard Grads in the White House were hoping for the economy to have turned around and people would be back to work.  Not only were their guesstimates wrong, but the growth in the economy has been adjusted to be lower than first thought. Things in our country will not get better until we have a president and congress who believe that it is just fine to work, make money and keep it, and to create jobs in the private sector.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts the U.S. budget deficit will hit $1.3 trillion this year. An astronomical figure, to be sure, but that’s lower than was projected in March. It’s also less than last year’s record $1.41 trillion deficit, which was close to 10% of GDP.
And, that’s the good news.
As the deficit grows so does the national debt, which is currently more than $13.3 trillion, according to official figures.
But the situation is actually much, much worse, according to Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff.
“Forget the official debt,” he tells Aaron in this clip. The “real” deficit – including non-budgetary items like unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the defense budget – is actually $202 trillion, the professor and author calculates; or 15 times the “official” numbers.
“Congress has engaged in Enron accounting,” says Kotlikoff, who recently penned an op-ed for Bloomberg entitled: The U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It.
Yet, the debt market continues to have an insatiable appetite for U.S. Treasuries; heading into Monday’s session, the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond (which moves in opposition to its price) was at its lowest level since April 2009.

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