Posted on 27-12-2002
US
Gov Debt Astronomical - Literally
By Alan Marston
The ultra-conservative Bush administration asked the US Congress for a Christmas Day gift, approval for yet another increase in the limit on its national debt (government created money loaned back to itself). The latest rationalisation for the need to conjure up money is the cost of combating terrorism and the US economy's slowdown.
Despite lecturing the world about being fiscally responsible, the US government has never shrunk from creating billions of $US fuel for its own economy. However the $US will not go untouched and is likely to fall further in value kicking in the all to familiar chain reaction that ends up in stagflation. The Clinton years were years of government budget surplus which only ended as recently as two years ago. This year the fgures are bad a US government income over spending shortfall of $157 billion and an expected larger one in 2003. Worse will be to come, a light will be shone into the dark recesses of the US Treasury, which will have to bear a debt limit in July increased by $450 billion to a total of $6.4 trillion, likely to increase again the same time next year. Note, $6.4 trillion written out in full is $6,400,000,000,000 Which if put into dollar bills and piled one on top of the other would reach from the Earth to beyond the Moon.
Though today's announcement was no surprise it highlighted the sharp deterioration in the US Government's financial condition, which even the pathetic Deomcratic so-called opposition should be able to use as ammunition against the Bush administration's planned increased spending on the military and decreased tax due to tax cuts. Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, seized on today's request to denounce Mr. Bush's campaign to make permanent last year's tax cuts. "By raising the debt ceiling to pay for the president's tax cuts and his other spending, the Bush administration is wanting our children and grandchildren to pay our bills," Mr. Conrad said in a statement.
Treasury officials would not say how much they want to increase the debt ceiling, which will be subject to negotiation with Congressional leaders as the deadline approaches. History teaches us that Bush will get whatever he asks for (from the US Treasury) and a whole lot he didn't ask for (from ever unpredictable real life).
The US dept was once an academic affair, not so in the current era of the US dominated global economy.
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