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.