At the moment of speaking, or better said – of writing this post, the United States of America´s national debt is over 15 trillion $ and is rising literally by every second. It is said it all started with the World War II when the United States government allowed it´s spending to sky-rocket leading to the recession that lasted for 12 consecutive years and the consequences are felt even today in the 21st century. Out of the nowadays´ debt amount, over 2 trillions goes to the social security sector while over 4 trillions are saved by the government trust funds. But all the rest is what the United States owes to the public, on the national level. And despite of all the efforts and measures presidents and presidents of The United States and their cabinets had tried in order to turn the situation the other way round, the things are still the same, the situation seems hopeless and the debt is in the ever increasing motion. What Clinton´s cabinet tried was to reduce the debt as a percent of the gross domestic product. Bush´s cabinet restarted the deficit by cutting the taxes for riches but even that proved futile. Then three months before Obama won the elections, U.S.A. faced the fact that red ink hit a peak rate of 1 trillion $. The only success was the move of Obama´s administration and their package of stimulus, but it was only 787 billion $ approved in February, 2009. It was allocated as 288 billions in tax cuts, 224 billions for unemployment benefits, education and health care, and $275 billion for job creation. But even that wasn´t enough to stabilize the situation even for a while until some other more permanent solution was found. In order to temporarily stand in the way of the collapse of the country and prevent the sovereign default the United States was threatened to fall into thanks to the debt-ceiling crisis, president Barack Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011 on August, 2nd, 2011. It concentrated on limiting the debt and reduction of deficit mostly. Although everyone is aware that the act will only help in slowing down the growing rate of debt, not reduce it, there is a fear that the nowadays´ 15 trillion $ debt will reach the sum of 20 trillions and even 22 trillion $ very soon. It seems now that the days of stability or at least prosperity should be forgotten for good. This crisis and the ever increasing debt are also the result of the United States measures from November, 2008, when federal government spent billions of dollars as stimulus to the liquidity of the financial market in order it´s collapse to be prevented. What the United States government is up to now in it´s search for an exit out of this desperate situation is the search for new, rich, fertile resources. New resources which will fund the repayment of this enormous debt starting as soon as possible. Otherwise, the economy of the United States will suffer more and more each day.
... I thought the bulk of the debt was money owed to other countries. Are you telling me that it's NOT 'money owed to other countries,' but instead is "what the United States owes to the public, on the national level"? If so, why don't we just count the whole debt "redeemed," and just demote government-officials to slave-status? (you know, send `em out pickin` cotton & hemp etc.)
Interesting, but USA is never going to be worst off, no matter how much debt it has, USA is a very important part of the world because so much depends on their dollar. Unlike a smaller country, the debts the USA has are actually good for the country, has the USA ever had to borrow money from IMF...ever? A lot of other countries have to. Even if the US owes a lot of other countries, it can take its time to repay..for example, China.
