$21T National Debt on "2019 Budget Showdown"

Found something I found to be intriguing on US Debt Clock (.org) this evening -


Home Page

That's the usual UsDebtClock it shows a debt of $18,390,358,000,000 as of my posting this

but there's something new here, called "BUDGET SHOWDOWN 2019" with comparisons between the estimates of different branches (or whatever you'd call them) (Congressional Budget Office, Office of Mngmt & Budget, etc.): link

Showing a balance of - $ 21 trillion, and another link (2019 @ current rates), showing a value of $ 20.6 T debt here

I also wonder who's running the website. Is that a little disconcerting to anyone else? Someone has time to keep track of all this # and there's this have quantitative data and yet our "representatives" are working 25 hours a week and taking our economy full speed off a cliff? What the hell! Any thoughts?

Google search of "2019 Budget Showdown" (with or without "US Debt", "US Deficit", etc.) did not turn up anything really either:
www.google.com...=2019+budget+showdown+debtclock

What do you think?



PS this thread was inspired by this thread: www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: FamCore

Just a heads up: your title uses 'deficit' (yearly) and your OP is referring to 'debt' (continuous). At any rate, it's a lot of coin the U.S.A. owes someone.

originally posted by: BeefNoMeat
a reply to: FamCore

Just a heads up: your title uses 'deficit' (yearly) and your OP is referring to 'debt' (continuous). At any rate, it's a lot of coin the U.S.A. owes someone.

and who owes it?
china.
a little disconcerting.

a reply to: BeefNoMeat

Thank you for pointing that out - edited title appropriately

a reply to: anticitizen

don't you mean, the U.S. owes it to China (because China has been buying up our bonds?) Can you elaborate?

China certainly doesn't owe the U.S., if that's what you're implying.

That's staggering... I cant sleep with only 2k a month in bills. Anyway here's a little video of the US Debt Ceiling Visualized in $100 Bills



That's an insane amount of money. Check out the link if you like, to see some imagery of this visualization. Thanks

I think this stack only goes to 16t but still...

It's not new. They've had a budget forecast on the site for a few years now.

The thing to look at is the debt to gdp ratio, and looks like we stabilized a while back.

Sorry, no doom.

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: anticitizen

don't you mean, the U.S. owes it to China (because China has been buying up our bonds?) Can you elaborate?

China certainly doesn't owe the U.S., if that's what you're implying.

sorry, yes, i meant USA owes it to china because they have been buying their bonds.
that's certainly an ace up china's sleeves.
kind of like a financial wmd.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

Debt to GDP ratio is an indicator of something, but GDP in and of itself isn't the best way to measure economic stability/productivity. It only look s at the value of the goods/services produced, and not any of the harm done by economic growth (for example, China's industry can produce a lot of goods which have value, but all of that production creates tons of pollution, which can cause all sorts of new expenses - health problems, environmental issues, etc. - so it might show a positive number but actually be more costly than all that which was produced in the first place)

GDP doesn't account for the distribution of wealth - 10 people could be extremely well-off and each have a gargantuan net worth, but every single other person could be penniless and the GDP would still look " great ".

Also, money is being pumped into the system (quantitative easing) which causes prices to go up (basic economics) - the changes in prices don't happen immediately but a year or two after the Fed buys T-bills from the gov (that's how money gets "put" into the system). Fiat currencies never last because there is nothing to back them up and worlwide everyone is losing faith in the dollar, which is also running out of time as the world reserve currency.

Based on all of this, I disagree that there is "no doom" ahead. Quite the contrary...

Its not to be honnest the debt that the problems.

The problem number is the deficit

And to be honest thats not exactly as pleasant number to look at either....

a reply to: FamCore

Okay, start a thread on that. Your points are entirely different than what's stated in the OP.

it doesn`t matter, we won`t ever have to pay any of that money back.
all that really matters is the interest, if we can afford to pay the interest every year than we`re good.
if we ever get to the point where we can`t pay the interest then we`re in trouble.
if I remember correctly, most politicians feel that if we can pay the interest with 10%-20% of the GDP then we`re in good shape.

None of the money is backed by gold so what's it matter? It's value isn't tied to anything.

originally posted by: anticitizen

originally posted by: BeefNoMeat
a reply to: FamCore

Just a heads up: your title uses 'deficit' (yearly) and your OP is referring to 'debt' (continuous). At any rate, it's a lot of coin the U.S.A. owes someone.

and who owes it?
china.
a little disconcerting.

China owns very little of the US debt, they're the largest foreign investor followed by Japan but China's share but they still only own 6% of the total debt. The largest creditor to the US is actually the US, we owe most of the money to ourselves.

originally posted by: crazyewok
Its not to be honnest the debt that the problems.

The problem number is the deficit

And to be honest thats not exactly as pleasant number to look at either....

If we had a congress that didn't all sign no tax increase pledges we could actually do something about the deficit. Our budget is pretty much cut as deep as it can be so it's not the spending side that's an issue, it's purely one of revenue generation. To compare this to the UK the US spends roughly $12,618 per person the UK spends $17,161 (in USD) per person.

originally posted by: onequestion
None of the money is backed by gold so what's it matter? It's value isn't tied to anything.

Actually the money is backed by something, it's the same thing that backs gold which is the ability to exchange it for another persons labor.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

I have made a lot of threads on this topic, perhaps I'll rehash some of this info into one larger thread. Thanks for the tip pl3b!