Wow, That Was Fast: Debt Out the Wazoo

[marmar]

Wow, That Was Fast: Debt Out the Wazoo
by Wolf Richter • Jun 12, 2020 •

US National Debt Spiked by $1 trillion in 5 weeks to $26 trillion. Fed monetized 65%. Business debts spike to high heaven.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.


Trillions are now whooshing by at a breath-taking pace. The US gross national debt – the total of all Treasury securities outstanding – jumped by $1 trillion over the past five weeks, from May 4 through June 8, and by $2.5 trillion for the 11 weeks since March 23.

The total US national debt outstanding has reached $26 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. I’ve been fretting about this debt on my site since 2011. In recent years, I innocently added a green upward arrow with “Debt out the wazoo” to my gross-national-debt charts, unaware that this tongue-in-cheek label would turn into a factual, data-based technical term:



And think about this: The huge mountain of debt that took decades to grow to this gargantuan size has exploded by another 10% in just 11 weeks.

The curious flat spots in the chart are the periods when the national debt bounced into the Congress-imposed debt ceiling. During these periods, the government borrowed from federal pension funds and other internal sources – the “extraordinary measures” – to make ends meet, thereby continuing to borrow, and when the political charade was resolved and the debt ceiling was raised, bam, the debt jumped by hundreds of billions in weeks. Now the debt jumps by the trillions in weeks on a routine basis. ...........(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/06/12/wow-thats-fast-debt-out-the-wazoo/

[soothsayer]

1. Drumpf didn't bankrupt all his businesses by accident

It’s his signature move.

[raging moderate]

2. Trump and cohorts are funneling our wealth into their coffers.

I read about a quick little episode right after the 2016 election. Trump and family walked into a New York restaurant that caters to billionaires. The entire restaurant broke into applause. The fix was in. Even then, they knew.

[Blue Owl]

3. K&R

[Mike 03]

4. This is the stuff of nightmares.

Kicking

[Midnight Writer]

5. What's worse, we spent this money for nothing. We've made zero progress in stopping the disease.

[bronxiteforever]

6. Kick and recommend.

[KPN]

7. This needs to be pinned once and for all squarely on the GOP. We better put a lot of energy into

educating the public and controlling the dialogue regarding the national debt if we ever hope to accomplish a single payer health system, affordable higher education, middle-class tax and student debt relief, etc. This needs to be a party priority: effective messaging about the national debt!

[BComplex]

8. The dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency. We will free-fall into a sea of debt that

even the good ole USA can't crawl out of, and the rest of the world is no longer going to consider us "safe" and/or "stable", which is why it has been given the status of the world's reserve currency.

This is going to change everything about America in the long run.

Thanks, Republicans!

[Rainbow Droid]

9. You have to wonder if most Americans have any concept whatsoever of hyperinflation. They will soon!

[Warpy]

10. We're just about ready for the Big Flop

Oh, the few insiders who pull out of this mess early will keep their ill gotten money largely intact, but chances are excellent now that those insiders will be offshore this time.

The game has gone on for just a little too long, and too many extraordinary measures have been used to try to keep the pieces on the board moving around. Each of those measures is now going to contribute to building the grenade that is going to destroy the whole business.

I'm not dumb enough to predict when this will happen, I wish I knew. Nor do I know the correct strategy for little fish to try to survive it, I wish I did. I just know that it became inevitable with Big Dummy's reckless tax cuts, and everything he has done since then will only increase the misery when it does.

[sandensea]

11. Can you imagine if Obama of Hillary were having to spend even HALF this much money!

Hate media would be screaming "NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY IMMINENT! STOCK UP ON GOLD AND CANNED FOOD!"

And of course guns.

[progree]

12. "A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." - Everett Dirksen

Last edited Thu Jun 25, 2020, 04:09 AM - Edit history (2)

original quote: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

adjusted for inflation and the new breed of Republicanism.