Your Share of the National Debt

It’s the Titanic and the Iceberg- Full Speed Ahead.

Icebergs aren’t the only things that are 90 percent underwater.

So is the US national debt.

The visible national debt is more than $22 trillion.  That’s the part that everybody knows about.  If you ask Google, it says $22 trillion.  If you walk by the US national debt clock in midtown Manhattan, you’ll see it registers $22 trillion.  Even politicians answer that the national debt is $22 trillion.

Well, not all of them.  Not so many years ago on the David Letterman’s show, President Obama was asked what the national debt was.  He didn’t know.

But like the iceberg, $22 trillion is the only part that people see.  It’s above the waterline.

In the case of both the iceberg and the national debt, the invisible part that is much larger and is also most the most dangerous.

So here are the numbers.  The visible national debt as I write this is about $22,028,000,000,000.    

The US population is just over 327,200,000.  That means the visible national debt is $67,322 per person.  

That’s your share.  It’s about $270,000 for a family of four.

How will the National Debt ever be paid?

We’ll get to that.  But first you need to be aware of the hidden debt, too.  It consists of promises the government has made to people, promises that people have relied upon, for which payment hasn’t been funded.  

Oh, they’re debts all right.  If the million of people who paid into Social Security for a lifetime suddenly stopped getting their checks – checks they depend upon to put food on the table – the economy would melt down.  

These promises are called “unfunded liabilities.” 

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says this hidden debt amounts to more than $222 trillion.  

That’s ten times the visible debt.  No wonder former Reagan budget director David Stockman says we’re headed for the “debtberg.”

Your share of the hidden debt would be more than $670,000.  It’s about $2,700,000 for a family of four.

When will you get your share?

That’s not really a serious question, because the debt can’t and won’t be repaid.

It will have to be “reset.”

That means it will be defaulted, repudiated, and inflated away.

The Federal Reserve “printed” almost $4 trillion during the Quantitative Easing episode.  Most of that hasn’t entered the consumer economy yet, but a lot of it has been stovepiped Wall Street’s way; hence the stock market bubble.  Watch out. 

There’s no reason that it won’t try to inflate away much of the national debt with more money printing.  

Of course, that will sink the dollar.  And send gold prices to the moon.    

The debtberg lies straight ahead.  Think of the Titanic.  We are perilously close and incapable of changing direction in time.  

You need to protect yourself and your family with gold. 

Now.  Before the debt reset.