USA’s National Debt

April 17, 2006
AlienNation • Human Rights • Political
7 Comments

Interesting to see it from another point of view: this one from the front page of the leading Russian paper (and website) Pravda.

The USA’s National Debt Clock can’t keep up with Bush’s spending – Pravda.Ru
Front page / World / Americas
30.03.2006

The USA’s national debt is increasing by $2.43 billion everyday. People expect the state debt to top the ten trillion dollar mark in the next few years.

A special huge electronic display in New York which shows in real time the size of state debt will not be able to cope with such a high figure. In 1989 the national debt clock was placed in Times Square so that Americans could see how effectively their government was working. At the time the national debt stood at 2.7 trillion dollars.

Yesterday at midday Moscow time the debt stood at $8 369 526 197 055.36. It even rose yesterday by $604 million. If the figures are to be believed, yesterday every American family bore a debt of almost $90 000.

Developer Douglas Durst owns the clock and his father erected it. He hoped to make Americans understand the economy better. The clock worked fine for ten years but in the run up to the new millennium it crashed. In its final moments the clock read that the national debt was $5.7 trillion and that the family share of the debt was $74 000. Durst believed that such a level of debt would not last long and he was right. Within two years the debt had started to grow at an unprecedented rate.

Durst pulled the plug on the clock in 2000, but it was switched back on in 2002 when debt started to once again increase. In 2004 a new model replaced the original clock which was able to express the figure in a shortened term in the event that in the future the debt suddenly started to rise at an unthinkable rate. Now the figure on the clock goes up by $20 000 every second.

So what is to be done? It is expensive being the “light of democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan, keep revolutionaries at bay and to “teach” the rest of the world how to live their lives.

Anton Struchenevsky, an analyst from management company Troika Dialog says, “Even when the state debt reaches the 10 trillion dollar mark, an economic crisis will not occur in the USA and the dollar will not crash. It is in the interests of the USA’s main creditor, China, to have a stable American currency and protect the American market.”

Komsomolskaya Pravda

Translated by Michael Simpson

Read it again.

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7 comments

1 darkman { 04.18.06 at 9:46 am }

China? The USA’s main creditor?

Surely that is a translation error. I would have though China would have been a debtor.

2 VirusHead { 04.18.06 at 9:52 am }

No, Darkman, it’s not an error at all. It’s why we can’t really say boo to China. The enormous and massively increasing national debt is not an abstract thing. China is the largest of the countries that acts as a creditor. All they have to do is drop it, and we’re fried – with cascading effects that would affect most of the rest of the world.

3 JollyRoger { 04.19.06 at 1:14 am }

I happen to believe that our Beijing bankers will pull the plug the minute they have enough resources to sustain that kind of a blow. The way the Chimperor is spending, China will decide one day that real money is better than the Monopoly money they get from us. And that day has to be coming in the next few years.

4 the daily phosdex { 04.22.06 at 12:21 pm }

I’m not sure if anyone is aware of this, but the Bureau of the Public Debt has a scheme in place to allow the public to make voluntary donations towards reduction of the National Debt held by the American people.

Which Your Correspondent has used in connexion with the online shopping facilities on his weblog, and will continue to do so, in case anybody is interested.

As well, might I encourage other webmasters to consider donating part of their online-sales commissions to reducing the National Debt.

5 VirusHead { 04.22.06 at 12:26 pm }

Well, first off – I don’t make enough off affiliates or contributions even to maintain the domain costs of the site, so it’s kind of moot.

I could put a link, but…

My feeling is that we’re all going to pay it anyway. I would rather look to the causes, and get it back from the ones who have (for the most part) stolen our money and put us into debt to China and others.

6 young_activist { 04.22.06 at 3:53 pm }

That’s right, 90% of the debt is held overseas. The debt has actaully already crossed the %10 trillion mark because about $2 trillion of it is hidden in the Social Security surplus. We need to stop the debt now because at the rate we are going every cent of tax revenue will go to paying interest on the debt in the year 2040. That is, in theory at least, the year the bonds lose all value and the economy that is dependent upon them crashes.

7 young_activist { 04.22.06 at 3:55 pm }

I am considering donating a portion of the profit of my blog to help lower the debt, still haven;t figured out how much though.

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