A perspective of our national debt from the CIA.

[Bosso 63]

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html


Please fasten your seat belts and place your trays in the upright position. We are about to encounter some turbulence.

[Rydz777]

1. The CIA figure is the Current Account Balance which is

given as $ 862,300,000,000. The National Debt is worse:
8,810,662,300,900.
Your post is a useful reminder of what a deep hole we have dug ourselves into - and are still digging - in defiance of the first Law of Holes which is to know when to stop.

[indepat]

2. Can you say nanner republic, a looming 2nd world nanner republic at that

[Bosso 63]

4. O.K. . . . Now I'm really depressed.

I can't wrap my mind around numbers that large, but I think it's time we take the shovel a way from Bush.

[Make7]

3. I believe 'Current Account Balance' is better known as the 'Trade Deficit'. (nt)

[unlawflcombatnt]

5. -$862 billion

It's amazing how we rarely hear this number in the press. The Bush-ites blurt out their concocted 200+ billion number, that they arrived at by subtracting the Social Security surplus, and every other manipulation they can come up with.

[kineneb]

6. holy crap

and notice the country above us, Spain, and the jump in the size of the number...

"turbulence" is an understatement...as a gentleman said on the BBC, "the manure is about to hit the ventilator."

step right up and get your HazMat suits, looks like we are going to need them...

[DoctorStrangelove]

7. And 90 million poor Americans -- who will pay the debt?

[primative1]

8. My guess ... no one

If anyone had any intention of paying it they wouldnt have let it run away like they have.
There is a common practice used by those in the process of filing bankruptcy where in the period immedietly before filing, they go on a big spending spree .... what the hey ... yippeee!

Hmm ... get ready for the mother of all currency devaluations IMO.
Think Argentina 1990s

[illinoisprogressive]

9. how can one man so throroughly destroy a country so fast? bush hates America