Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Federal Debt Spike

Morgan Stanley (via Self Evident)
A statutory limit on the amount of federal debt outstanding has been in place since 1917, when Congress enacted the Second Liberty Bond Act. The current limit is $14.294 trillion. Since 1940, the debt ceiling has been increased on 80 separate occasions.
Current levels are now north of $14 trillion, bringing increase #81 shortly.



What worries me is our ability / desire to get our act together. As can be seen above, the amount of debt is not just rising, but the rate of increase has been rising exponentially.

Source: Treasury Direct

3 comments:

  1. Would like to see this in real terms or as a percent of gdp. I bet the exponential increase would be even more pronounced.

    ReplyDelete
  2. good idea... will see what i can do

    ReplyDelete