U.S. Federal debt obligations exceed world GDP. World GDP.

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88851

how can we pay back this debt if there does not exist enough money in the world to pay it?

oh... wait... bernanke. nevermind.

[D1st0rt]

Ok, so we just take 2 years to pay it back now. No big deal.

[Epinephrine]

Eh, you don't pay everything back in one go, but have decades to pay it back...

[Xog]

thank you george

[Mela]

in before "Obama did it"

[grand]

Only people that can save the U.S. are the Chinese. kthx ez pz

[Izor]

Well it is obvious that obama is a large part of it.

[roxxkatt]

i can pay it off, ill just borrow the money, and ill pay you back later! $$$

[Zerzera]

You can't really call it a debt when you invested it well.

[Nycle]

Only people that can save the U.S. are the Chinese. kthx ez pz

Let's ask the Chinese to dump all of their dollar-denominated currency reserves back to the market. That'll lower your debt... at least relatively!

[Jerome Scuggs]

Eh, you don't pay everything back in one go, but have decades to pay it back...

it's not even the fact of the size of the debt.... it's the idea that it's somehow not bizarre that it was even allowed to happen.

another question - would we be able to pay them back? take the subprime loans - so much money was thrown around because the assumption was, "it would get paid back". how many of the outstanding debt obligations are actually solvent? how many were bust investments that can't be paid back - like the first bailout bill's bank asset purchases?

i have no idea how international finance works... but whoever is the person checking up on the U.S.'s credit credibility... he sucks. every loan made in the past decade at least could probably be called "subprime". especially now that the WORLD'S yearly income can't even fully pay back one country's outstanding debt.

[Epinephrine]

Except that 'outstanding debt' figure you provide is sort of fake.

I mean that's like saying, oh my gosh you have a $400,000 mortgage on your house!!! But you only make $100,000 a year!!! That's CRAZY TALK!

But then if we look at it even closer, we'd find that with just very, very minor changes in rates of payout or tax rates, this entire social security/medicare problem would be fixed, because when those HUGE numbers are quoted, they are quoted for like a 75 year time horizon. Whenever someone has such a huge time horizon, simple mathematics tells us, even very small percentage changes from today could make all the difference. All of this is scaremongering and I don't buy any of it.

[genocidal]

idiots

money isnt real

[Nycle]

i have no idea how international finance works... but whoever is the person checking up on the U.S.'s credit credibility... he sucks. every loan made in the past decade at least could probably be called "subprime". especially now that the WORLD'S yearly income can't even fully pay back one country's outstanding debt.

Start realizing the dominant role the US has played in post-WWII worldwide economics. Under the Bretton Woods agreement, the dollar was anchored as the international unit of account. A large portion of the world's trade is conducted in dollars and oil is priced in dollars. This creates a permanent demand for dollars, regardless of whether the US government is pursuing sound fiscal policies or not. Global reserve currency status equals reduced currency fluctuations and borrowing costs, and you have been (ab)using this 'advantage' for a long time now. It has nothing to do with credit credibility as much as it has to do with the way the US used their weight to push for global economic dominance which to this day is holding the world in its grip. The question is for how long...

[Jerome Scuggs]

Except that 'outstanding debt' figure you provide is sort of fake.

I mean that's like saying, oh my gosh you have a $400,000 mortgage on your house!!! But you only make $100,000 a year!!! That's CRAZY TALK!

not really - the mortgage is backed by collateral which is worth $400,000. what is the u.s. "worth"? considering most of the money in the debt was "thrown away" (consumed, not invested), i don't think the u.s. has the collateral nor the GDP to sustain its current pace of taking on debt... and what empirical evidence indicates the u.s. will stop increasing its debt anytime soon?