Talk:National debt of the United States/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Appeal for Organization

This article has some great info, but it is terribly organized and diffuclt to navigate. The graphs and visual information are helpful but clash with other visuals and seem haphazardly thrown around the text. A good OVERVIEW section is desperately needed for those who just want a short basic understanding, while the detailed sections later need to be more readable, perhaps by making the flow along the lines of moving from less to more detail as the article progresses...e.g., the sudden section on Understanding Off-Budget and On-Budget debt may be useful but it is way too early in the article and quickly announces the lost-in-the-detail impression of this article. PLEASE, someone with organization skills do us a favor and clean it up, make it flow easier and more logically. (apologies, I would do it myself if I knew how to do anything besides write text) Leidseplein (talk) 04:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I took a shot at it, moving some of the big tables into appendices to help the flow and organizing the topics a bit differently. I have not removed much text, except some distracting political commentary at the start.Farcaster (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Scratch Pad for banging out the definitions of terms

Please feel free to add terminology to this scratchpad:

U. S. Treasury Vocabulary:

Public Debt - U. S. debt in the form of securities issued by the Treasury.

I haven't been able to find a formal definition for this term, all I am going by is how the term is used in Treasury Publications . . . basically, Public Debt securities is a synonym for Treasury Securities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Csdidier (talk • contribs) 10:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE: I sent a barrage of emails to the U. S. Treasury asking them if this website was representative of the official position of the U. S. Treasury. This website stated clearly in plain English that there were "several different concepts of debt that are at various times used to refer to the national debt" . . . this website then went further to explain that "Debt held by the public is the most meaningful of these concepts and measures the cumulative amount outstanding that the government has borrowed to finance deficits." . . . I received an answer, but it wasn't a straightforward answer . . . anyway . . . the website has since disappeared . . . I'm not sure what that means or if my emails had any impact. Csdidier (talk) 01:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I've spoken with a professional historian who specializes on the Public Debt . . . I'm just waiting for the U. S. Treasury to either clearly confirm, or disconfirm the definitions I've listed here . . . there are some implicit inconsistencies within them . . . anyway that's not my problem . . . that is the U. S. Treasury's problem . . . if they ever give me a straight answer I'll let you know.Csdidier (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Public Debt Outstanding - The face amount or principal amount of marketable and non-marketable Public Debt securities currently outstanding¹.

Public Debt Subject to Limit - The Public Debt Outstanding adjusted for Unamortized Discount on Treasury Bills and Zero Coupon Treasury Bonds, Miscellaneous debt (very old debt), Debt held by the Federal Financing Bank and Guaranteed Debt¹.

In many Treasury publications, you will see a distinction between Federal Debt securities meaning securities issued by all Federal agencies, and Public Debt securities meaning those securities issued by the U. S. Treasury, but if you look at the MSPD published by the bureau of public debt, they include the Guaranteed Debt of Government Agencies. This doesn't make sense because these securities aren't issued by the Treasury, so they are not Public Debt securities. They are not counted in the Total Public Debt Outstanding, but they are counted in the Total Public Debt Subject to Limit.Csdidier (talk) 10:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Statuatory Debt Limit - The limit that Congress imposes on the amount of Public Debt Securities the U. S. Treasury can issue. The U. S. Treasury can issue as many securities as it needs as long as the Public Debt Subject to Limit does not exceed the Statuatory Debt Limit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Csdidier (talk • contribs) 23:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Gross Federal Debt - The Public Debt plus the guaranteed debt of government agencies other than the Treasury².

Intra-governmental Holdings - The portion of the Gross Federal Debt that is held by U. S. Government entities.

Debt Held by the Public - The portion of the Gross Federal Debt held by entites that are not part of the U. S. Government.

National Debt - According to the U. S. Treasury, Public Debt, Gross Federal Debt, and Debt Held by the Public are all concepts that can be used to define the term National Debt, with Debt Held by the Public being the most "meaningful"².

Before the website referenced above appeared, the U. S. Treasury had never formally defined the term National Debt. This website had suggested a "preferred" definition of the term National Debt. The website referenced above has been taken down however, so I'm not certain, but I believe this means that we are back to where we were before that web-site went up . . . which is . . . the U. S. Treasury has never formally defined the term National Debt. User:Csdidier|Csdidier]] (talk) 02:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Terms Not Defined by the U. S. Treasury:

National Debt - A debt accrued by a nation. When applied to the United States, there is some contention as to which of the official U. S. Government terms this refers to (see terminolgy dispute), but throughout this article, this term is used to refer to the Public Debt when referring to the U. S. National Debt.

Government Debt - A debt held by a government. When applied to the U. S. Government, there is some contention as to which of the official U. S. Government terms this refers to (see terminolgy dispute).

Federal Debt - A term which is synonymous with either the Gross Federal Debt, or the Public Debt. This dual definition is justified by the assumption that the difference between these two figures is negligible. (federal debt was formally defined by the Treasury in 1973)

Gross Debt - It seems that previous editors were using this term to refer to the total Public Debt outstanding. On second thought, Gross Debt is most probably meant to refer to what the GAO calls the Gross Federal Debt which is the same thing as what the U. S. Treasury defined in 1973 as simply the Federal Debt. This usage is in accordance with non-governmental budget policy advisory groups such as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.Csdidier (talk) 20:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Public vs. gross debt in "Recent additions to the public debt of the United States"

This section refers to public debt but appears to be using gross debt numbers. This should be clarified or corrected. Rwessel (talk) 06:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No, that usage is probably accurate, the difference between the Public Debt and the Gross Federal Debt is so small, that it is basically considered negligible

Here is the mathematical relationship between these terms:

(Gross Federal Debt) = (Debt Held by the Public) (Intragovernmental Holdings) = (Public Debt) (Debt of Government Agencies)

(Public Debt) = (Debt Held by the Public) (Intragovernmental Holdings) - (Debt of Government Agencies)

(Debt of Government Agencies) = (Gross Federal Debt) - (Public Debt)

Hope this helps.Csdidier (talk) 15:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Errr... At this point the gross debt is about 4.5 trillion larger than the public debt. See columns two and five of the table titled "National debt for selected years" in this article. And the "Recent additions to the public debt of the United States" appears to be using the gross debt numbers ($13.5T for 2010), while being titled "public debt" (which I'd expect to $9T). Rwessel (talk) 17:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

"Public Debt" is not the same thing as "Debt Held by the Public" a lot of people confuse the two.Csdidier (talk) 19:33, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

A good example is on page 51 of "this U. S. Treasury Publication, they lay it all out in a nice organized way. To illustrate the example:

For 2006:

Total Federal Securities (Gross Federal Debt) = $8,530,366,000,000

Total Public Debt Securities (Public Debt) = $8,506,974,000,000

Total Public Debt Securities Held by U. S. Government Accounts (Intra-governmental Holdings) = $3,663,773,000,000

They don't have a total for Debt Held by the Public in this example, but it would be the sum of:

(6) Public issues held by Federal Reserve banks (7) Public Debt Securities held by Private Investors (11) Agency Securities Held by Private Investors =

(Debt Held by the Public) = $4,866,593,000,000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Csdidier (talk • contribs) 21:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Frankly "public debt" is technically ambiguous if not qualified with "net" or "gross" (see first few sentences of article) but most commonly when unqualified it means net public debt, and "gross debt" means gross public debt. Consider the first graph in the article (as well as several other tables). Rwessel (talk) 21:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, let us look at the first few sentences of the article. It says 'Debt Held by the Public (net public debt)', now you will never see the term (net public debt) on any U. S. Treasury document, or on any GAO document, because the term doesn't exist. Someone made that up and posted it on Wikipedia, but that has nothing to do with the U. S. Treasury, or the Federal Government and the way they operate, because they don't use that language. If I was wrong, it would very easy to find a U. S. Treasury publication that uses the term (net public debt) but you won't find one. You will see 'Debt Held by the Public', that is a term clearly defined by the Treasury, and the GAO. Yes I've seen the first graph, the author used the term "public debt" and "gross debt", when it should be labelled "Debt Held by the Public", and "Gross Federal Debt".Csdidier (talk) 22:02, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Which leave me back at my original point - this needs to be clarified, presumably by fixing the relevant text throughout the article to use the correct, and consistent, terminology. Rwessel (talk) 05:51, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100%, I noticed this a long time ago, and I have been doing a lot of research trying to determine the true definitions of all of these terms, and I've posted my research on this discussion board under 'Scratchpad of vocabulary'. Please feel free to add comments, or recommend terms and how they are definedCsdidier (talk) 10:55, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Needs an update

In the section "Understanding_on-budget_and_off-budget_deficits", the statement is made " The federal government publishes the total debt owed (public and intragovernmental holdings) at the end of each fiscal year [21] and since FY1957, the amount of debt held by the federal government has increased each year." However, the link provided only goes to the year 1999. My understanding is that there was an on budget surplus the following two years (as stated in the preceding paragraph), invalidating the statement. It may still be of interested that prior to 1999 the previous on budget surplus was in 1957, but the current text creates confusion, particularly when viewed against the statement in the previous paragraph that "Since FY1960, the federal government has run on-budget deficits except for FY1999 and FY2000..." Tgillet1 (talk) 01:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a good question, I'd be very curious to know . . . . I guess you would need to look at the historical tables published by the OMB.Csdidier (talk) 02:31, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

More info please: Intragovernmental Holdings, is this even debt?

Intragovernmental holdings make up half the debt, but there is very little detail about it. Is this even debt? Isn't it more like a placeholder - arguably to remind everyone of the obligations to future generations of social security benefits, as the Social security law is currently written???? Do other governments consider such debt owed only to itself and owned only by itself as public debt? Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically whats happened here (should be pointed out in the article?) is that the social security payroll taxes have been used by other parts of the government and the government has put IOUs in the social security trust fund? In other words, the government under-collected general taxes but over collected social security taxes and used the income from social security tax to pay for other parts of the government....right???

It seems to me the US could decide tomorrow to phase out social security as we know it, perhaps replace it with enhanced 401k incentives or whateer, and that eliminating the future social security payments would thereby eliminate half the debt of the US...

I highly doubt this scenario. My grandfather, and everybody else's grandfather and grandmother worked hard and earned real cash. 6.2% of that hard cash went to the Social Security Administration, who took the excess and deposited it into the OASDI Trust Fund in the form of Special Issue Treasury Bonds, which is the most solid form of currency the Federal Government has to offer. Cash doesn't earn interest. Now after all of our grandfather's, grandmother's, father's, mother's, and our hard work, the OASDI Trust Fund has accumulated 2.6 trillion dollars in Special Issue Treasury Bonds. Do you really think the Federal Gov't is going to step in now and default on those Treasury Bonds? Do you really think the intelligent portion of the American Public will allow that to happen? You hear about dictator's in third world countries illegally seizing funds in large bank accounts in their country, but I highly doubt that something like that would happen in the United States.Csdidier (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I just thin it bears pointing out, in a big way, that half the public debt of America isn't really like 'normal' debt, it is debt owned by or to Americans themselves, and is really kind of a placeholder to remind everyone of the need to address future social security obligations in some way (repaying the debt) or another (phasing out social security).... Does anyone else see my point here, that, arguably, the US public debt is only about half as big as advertised, especially if other countries don't count future social security benefits as public debt??? Leidseplein (talk) 04:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I hear this theme quite a bit . . . people often refer to the OASDI holdings as IOUs instead of using the proper term which would be Special Issue United States Treasury Bonds. The intent is quite obvious: to use improper terms to create the impression that the OASDI Trust Fund holdings have no value.Csdidier (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The philosophical argument usually continues by describing the holdings as non-cash, which is again intended to create the impression that the holdings have no value. This is amusing because cash, let's use a 100 dollar bill as an example, is nothing more than a piece of paper issued by the federal government. There are no real assets, it is just an IOU if you want to get philosophical about it. There is no difference between a 100 dollar bill, and a 100 dollar U. S. Treasury Bond, in that they are both pieces of paper issued by the Federal Government. They both actually have value because they are backed by the Federal Gov't and we have a centuries old system in place where these pieces of paper get exchanged back and forth and can be traded in for goods and services. The truth of the matter is this: Of all the pieces of paper the Federal Government has to offer, the type held in the OASDI Trust Fund is the best you can get. The U. S. Treasury will occasionally hold an auction and offer this type to the Private Sector, and when they do, they go real fast.Csdidier (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Another false argument is to describe the OASDI Trust Fund as "Money the Federal Government owes to itself". This is a deception, because that money doesn't belong to the Federal Government. That money belongs to anyone who has contributed to that fund. We all own a stake in it collectively. This is why it is called an entitlement, which means ownership. The government administers the funds, but if we are not pleased with what they are doing with our money, we are supposed to take advantage of our representative government and make them do as we wish. So it is not money the Federal Government owes to itself . . . it is money the Federal Government owes to me and anyone else who is a joint stake-holder of that fund.Csdidier (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, this is a recent philosophical debate (recent as in the last 10 years), and it is quite interesting. I wonder if this discussion belongs on the Social Security Wikipedia page instead of the U S public debt page.Csdidier (talk) 19:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a view on where the philosophical discussion belongs, but I do think that both sides of the Total Public Debt Outstanding—both the Debt held by the public and the Intragovernmental holdings—ought to be represented, per the actual sourced information on how the Federal government itself considers it, in the Wikipedia article on the U.S. public debt. The government, both the political side and the administrative bureaucracy, say that the money borrowed from the OASD Trust Fund must be paid back. And that is current law. Of course the political folk could change the rules of the game, but Wikipedia's job is to encyclopedically represent the current verifiable information on the point, not to speculate on (likely or unlikely) future changes. N2e (talk) 03:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless Social Security is overhauled (highly unlikely) the government will have to borrow to fund the shortfall in Social Security. This means that "real" debt held by the public will be replacing the "intragovernmental debt" between now and about 2035, when the Trust fund is exhausted. So it is real debt...if we honor the Social Security obligations between now and 2035, which is very likely.Farcaster (talk) 05:16, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a forum to argue this issue, despite all the verbiage so passionate that social security is the highest form of commitment in the history of mankind. Clearly this is just a POV of some editors - others no doubt don't give a damn if social security is ended tomorrow and the intragovernmental debt is eliminated. I appreciate the refrences to grandfathers and the deeply held beliefs, but its irrelevant to an encyclopedia. It seems to me intragovernmental debt is an altogether different animal that may not technically be debt since the legal obligation to pay it back is questionable - its not like the government can sue itself to pay back its own debt. The public owners of debt could sue the government for collection if necessary but since the government itself (aka Americans themselves) own their own debt, they could cancel it anytime with no legal consequence (only political fallout) this bears pointing out.:::I would like to add points from sources like:

Like home mortgages, much of the debt never has to be paid down [...] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969745,00.html

including intragovermental holdings is a flawed method both for calculating the government's net debt and for appraising America's future social security problem....Debt is debt, while expected social security outlays are another kind of liality.http://www.businessinsider.com/is-money-owed-to-social-security-part-of-the-debt-2010-6

programs like Social Security and Medicare in which the benefits of the programs are not legally guaranteedhttp://www.chamberofcommerce.com/business-advice/economists-economic-research/is-the-united-states-going-broke-206/

The American public owns 53% of US debt, by far the largest share owned by any country http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/02/04/us_mostly_indebted_to_itself.html

Besides arguments from those who simply don't agree with the ideas expressed in the sources, and have a religiously held devotion to social security, are there any reasons not to include an expanded explanation of intragovernmental holdings as in the sources above?Leidseplein (talk) 01:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Various Rants

• I have trouble with this sentence in the article:

  'Within the remainder of this article the phrase "Public Debt" is employed as a shorthand for "Debt Held by the Public"'

  This is just plain Wrong!

  "Public Debt" is a term with a very clear meaning which is very distinct from "Debt Held by the Public".

  I refer you to the U.S. Treasury Website for these distinct definitions.

  Using one of these terms as shorthand for the other is blatant obfuscation.

  The term "Debt held by the Public" did not exist before January 31, 2001. It first appeared out of nowhere in the U.S. Treasury Monthly Report on the Public Debt issued January 31, 2001 . . . which so happens to be the first month George ...W. Bush held office. You can verify this here. It is a very poor choice of words, because it creates a situation where the sub-category "Debt held by the Public" sounds deceivingly like the super-category "Public Debt".Csdidier (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)




• Regarding this sentence

  "The United States public debt is presented by the United States Treasury as two calculations: "Debt Held by the Public", defined as U.S. Treasury securities held by institutions outside the United States Government, and the "Gross Debt,"

  This is not true . . . whoever wrote this did not look at the U.S. Treasury Monthly Reports on the Public Debt of the United States which is published by the Bureau of the Public Debt.

  Where does this term "Gross Debt" come from? This is not the same as "Gross Federal Debt" that you can read about on U.S. Treasury Website is it? The term does not appear on the U.S. Treasury Monthly Reports on the Public Debt of the United States, so where does this term come from?Csdidier (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)




• Regarding this sentence:

  'The terms of "Debt Held by the Public" and "Total Public Debt Outstanding" are often used interchangeably, with much contention as to which is the true measure of government debt'

  Advice:

  If someone tells you that they have their own definition of "Public Debt" and that their definition is right and the U. S. Treasury's definition is wrong . . . just walk away . . . and then there is no contention. . . . don't make eye contact.Csdidier (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

  
  

  
  
• Regarding This Section:

  Unfunded Obligations
  
  The U.S. government is committed under current law to mandatory payments for programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The GAO projects that payouts for these programs will significantly exceed tax revenues over the next 75 years. The Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) payouts already exceed program tax revenues and Social Security payroll taxes fully cover payouts only until 2017. These deficits require funding from other tax sources or borrowing.[52]

• no mention that each of these Government Insurance Programs have large trust funds?
• this section repeats (in more depth) what is said in previous section . . . merge?
• should clarify that these are NOT Federal Funds (new info->invalid point)
• the federal government is not mandated to pay anything.(new info->invalid point)
• the U. S. Treasury (a Federal Department) is only required to redeem the U. S. Treasury Bonds it has issued to these trust funds.(new info->invalid point)
• explain how redeeming these Treasury Bonds, will put an extra strain on the Federal Budget.
• the Social Security - Old Age Survivor Insurance trust fund ($2.34 trillion) expected to last until 2040 (2037 if pooled with Disability Insurance trust fund).
• perhaps a sentence connecting this issue to the Intra-Governmental Holdings portion of the public debt
• the reference link (65) is broken, so you can not verify the numbers.





• OMG! This is worse than I thought . . . I'm finding mistakes in the references . . . Regarding the quote from reference 94:

  Debt held by the public is important because it reflects the extent to which the government goes into private credit markets to borrow. Such borrowing draws on private national saving and international saving, and therefore competes with investment in the nongovernmental sector (for factories and equipment, research and development, housing, and so forth). Large increases in such borrowing can also push up interest rates and increase the amount of future interest payments the federal government must make to lenders outside of the United States, which reduces Americans’ income. By contrast, intragovermental debt (the other component of the gross debt) has no such effects because it is simply money the federal government owes (and pays interest on) to itself.

  The sentence "intragovernmental debt (the other component of the gross debt) has no such effects because it is simply money the federal government owes (and pays interest on) to itself." is INCORRECT - YOU FAIL!!!

  The sentence "intragovernmental debt (the other component of the gross debt) has no such effects because it is simply money the federal government owes (and pays interest on) to NON-FEDERAL government agencies." would be CORRECT.

  What is funny about this quote is that they explain that Debt Held by the Public is credit from the Private Sector . . . Public = Private . . . and Private = Public.

  This is a tricky situation . . . where a reference makes a big big big mistake. . . . hmmmmmmmmm.

Csdidier (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. As defined (by you?) above, Intra-governmental Holdings is, "the portion of the Public Debt that is held by U. S. Government entities." This suggests that they have the sentence you selected dead on. Now their economic analysis leaves something to be desired, but that is another story.0¹⁸ (talk) 16:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The distinction is in the word "Federal". "Federal" and "Government" are not the same word, If it was the federal government paying money to itself, it would show up as both a credit and a debit on the end of the year Federal Budget Accounting. But it is the federal government paying money to non-federal accounts . . . outside of the Federal Budget. It is important to distinguish between Federal Funds and Non-Federal Funds. When Congress and the Prez bang out the Federal Budget . . . this only pertains to the federal funds. I don't think the Prez has any say over Non-Federal Funds, just Congress, but I have to look that up . . . don't quote me on that. It is important to note that the debt is a "Federal Debt".

You are correct in that if they had used the word "U. S. Government" they would be spot on, but they used the word "Federal Government" and so I'm being a stickler, raising a flag, technically they are wrong.Csdidier (talk) 17:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you are confused. There is only one US Government, it is the US Government. When the US government wants to talk about other levels of government in the US, it says explicitly the level that it is talking about (i.e. loans to state, county, and city governments would have been used if you were correct). But maybe I'm wrong, can you find a citation that agrees with you? 0¹⁸ (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

You are right, I was confused . . . there is only one US Federal Government. So the money goes "off-budget" but it is still Federal? That's bizarre. I have read phrases like "Supplemental Security Insurance benefits are paid for with Federal Funds, unlike Social Security retirement benefits which are paid for with Social Security funds," and I've always thought there was a distinction. It looks like you and they are right, however . . . I'll look into this over the weekend.Csdidier (talk) 19:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected . . . The U. S. Treasury lists Intragovernment Interest as the Federal Government paying interest to itself:

The Office of Management and Budget does not include all of this in its calculation of the Federal Budget . . . the SSA Historian's Office explains why:

. . . in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1990 the law was changed to stop the use of the Trust Funds for any function in the unified budget, including calculations of the deficit. One sub-part of OBRA 1990 was called the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), and it was this sub-part that specified this change in the law.

The BEA budget treatment of Social Security basically remains the law to the present day. Specifically, present law mandates that the two Social Security Trust Funds, and the operations of the Postal Service, are formally considered to be "off-budget" and no longer part of the unified federal budget. (The Medicare Trust Funds, by contrast, are once again part of the unified budget.) So where matters stand presently is that the transactions to the Social Security Trust Funds and the operations of the Postal Service are "off-budget" and everything else is "on-budget."

However, those involved in budget matters often produce two sets of numbers, one without Social Security included in the budget totals and one with Social Security included. Thus, Social Security is still frequently treated as though it were part of the unified federal budget even though, technically, it no longer is.

but again the U. S. Treasury shows it as "simply money the federal government owes (and pays interest on) to itself." which is good enough for me.Csdidier (talk) 19:06, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The U.S. Treasury or any other entity of the US government is not the final irrefutable source on matters related to this article. They are but one institution and thereby present one point of view, there are others equally acceptable to inclusion in an encyclopedia. Although I personally agree with the final conclusion you came to after lengthy painful pedantic discussion, your or anyone else would have been quite right to include points from sources OTHER than the US government. The U.S. Treasury and any government entity has their own agenda, strengths, faults etc... and they alone are not the final sole arbiter of any dispute or definition.Leidseplein (talk) 01:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Billion vs Trillion

An IP is changing the wording from "billion" to "trillion" using what appears to be a mistaken review of the sources. The source says (using 2010 as an example) "As of September 30, 2010 and 2009, federal debt managed by BPD totaled about $13,551 billion and $11,898 billion, respectively." This is being used in the article as a note for the graph in the history section as "Audited figure was about "13,551 billion" ", which matches the source. I'm hoping the IP will discuss here before reverting again. Ravensfire (talk) 23:46, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

It struck me that the editor might be used to the common European convention which uses a comma as a decimal point, and sometimes the period as a group separator (spaces and hashmarks or apostrophes are also used for group separators). WP:ORDINAL does specify the U.S. convention (period for decimal point, comma for group separators). Rwessel (talk) 00:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I had that thought as well, so I asked the IP on their talk page to comment here. The IP does geolocate to Seattle, WA though. Ravensfire (talk) 00:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I made an edit to the main page showing that Social Security payouts exceeded receipts for the first time in 2010. The previous post showed that happening in 2017 or so, which sounds correct for when that post was written (probably a couple of years ago). I don't know how to make a link at the bottom for my reference but here it is http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy12/pdf/BUDGET-2012-TAB.pdf pg 327. This is generally related to discussions here on on-budget vs off-budget, social security surplus, and discussions on whether interest on the intra-government debt holdings should be counted. I avoided that problem by sticking to the simple "payouts exceeded taxes collected" which is clearly shown in that reference. Wikipedians please kindly help to link my reference in the main article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenbe (talk • contribs) 00:17, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Domestic vs. Foreign Debt

Is there a source for the domestic public debt vs. the foreign public debt of the United States Government? At one time it was said that we owed it to ourselves, but that is certainly not true today. A table for domestic vs. foreign debt for the past vs. now would be interesting. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:27, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The Fed's Debt sales

The Fed sells debt not to fund itself, but for interest rate maintenance. If they did not the overnight rate would drop to zero. The government spends by crediting accounts, not printing money, and taxes function to limit aggregate demand and give demand for a nations currency. Taxes do not fund government expenditures. WjtWeston (talk) 12:41, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Taxes

Perhaps graphs such as:

and

would help in this article, given the discussion about how the U.S.'s federal government has consistently lower taxes then other similar first world nations (which could imply thus lesser revenue). ItCanHappen (talk) 23:34, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

History Graph incorrect

The graph under "History" showed Congress as split in 1995/6 and 2003/4. This is incorrect since there was Republican control in both those time periods. I deleted it. http://one-simple-idea.com/CongressMakeUp_1855_2008.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.184.154.158 (talk) 11:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

In 2001 and 2002 control of Congress was split. Initially the House was solidly Republican and the Senate 50/50 (Cheney was VP so control went to Republicans), but a Senator switched from R to D (or at least caucased D). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.103.134 (talk) 00:31, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Jackson

How come there is no reference to Andrew Jackson retiring the national debt during his Presidency? I know that it did not last very long, but at one point the United States was debt-free. That was one of Jackson's goals when he became President. Emperor001 (talk) 02:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record, and then I promise I'm leaving this one for now, but it's actually more important to mention Hamilton's invention of the concept of American national debt. A better analogy for national debt is your mortgage, not your credit card: you never want to have short-term debt, but provided you're good on the little things, you'll be trusted to take care of the bigger ones. Randnotell (talk) 08:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Presentation of Standard & Poor's

I recently changed the presentation of Standard & Poor's from "the agency which gave Lehman Brothers a AAA rating shortly before Lehman's bankruptcy in 2008" to "United States–based financial-services company known for its stock-market indices" [1], because the latter may be biased and may fit better into, for example, a credibility discussion in the article of Standard & Poor's. Still, does anyone have any other suggestion what might be an optimal presentation of Standard & Poor's in this article? Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:26, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it's totally biased, says the guy who made the edit and can totally admit his bias. Mike (can I call you Mike? It's sort of an American/Southern thing), I'll say this. Standard & Poor's was off by $2 trillion. By comparison, they made a mistake the size of the GDP of Italy. As writers and editors, we should not allow anyone to make a mistake the size of Italy and get away with it, and by writing in academic-economic-ese rather than Standard English, S&P is counting on us to ignore the difference between $2,000,000,000,000, and, say, $2,000.

Now, the way I'm going about trying to fix this is by acknowledging my bias (that S&P made a HUGE mistake) and then trying to accurately portray what happened. This guy Mike Allen does good work, and I wouldn't be surprised if he talked to Tim Geithner yesterday or today, and I'm more inclined to believe a guy who's basically telling me what Geithner is thinking instead of the folks who are trying to hide Italy from me. The practical upshot of all this is that I'm going to remove a lot of the business language from S&P's thing in favor of the criticism.

My point is this. This article is already too long and complicated for you, Mike, or anyone to just change my words because they are biased. Y'all should come to a consensus on whether my words are biased or not: if they aren't, improve them, if they are, get rid of them. And when it's something as important as the GDP of Italy, a college student shouldn't be the one telling y'all this.

No offense, folks. This is my first major edit, so if I kick up an unproductive flame war, I apologize in advance. Randnotell (talk) 08:51, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

There are three reports of interest from S&P: April 18, July 14, and August 5. None have been adequately summarized, and I just added a link to the July report as it wasn't even mentioned. It's impossible to understand what happened without reading all three, as they build on each other. 75.60.5.244 (talk) 15:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Public Debt = Private Savings

If you want to reduce the governments debt, you must realize that you will have to reduce private savings by the same amount. The Government's Deficit is the Private Sector's (the public's) Surplus. WjtWeston (talk) 12:36, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that idea came from. Savings was low, and deficits high during the depression and WWII. Between WWII and 1980 (or so) personal savings increased, and public debt (in terms of GDP) declined. Since the 80's, personal savings have been on the decline, and government debt increasing. I doubt one could prove a cause-and-effect relationship, but the above is simply backwards from what has historically happened. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.184.154.158 (talk) 16:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it relates to the previous topic of domestic vs foreign debt holders. You can reduce the government's debt without reducing domestic private savings, by reducing debt holdings by foreigners. Nurg (talk) 06:09, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Sounds to me like he's making the assumption that everyone's tax return would become savings. Rather unusupported assumption, I would think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.178.105.68 (talk) 13:22, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought his assumption was that savings are invested directly or indirectly in US debt instruments so reducing debt means reducing savings. (Still a flawed hypothesis in my opinion because it fails to predict the historical relationship between savings rates and public debt in the US. XOXOXO, Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 14:14, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Work needed on Standard & Poor's downgrade section

The section which points to the main article on the downgrade by Standard & Poor's (and indeed the lead for the main article, too) needs urgent editing to properly summarise the events by someone who can do so, and has relevant knowledge. I do not have first-hand experience of the events, and thus can't reliably, which is why I am posting this here. —JeevanJones (talk) 16:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Jeeves, you may not have first-hand experience of the events, but only Tim Geithner and Standard & Poor's representatives do, and they're certainly not going to make edits, so you may as well try (as you appear to have done). Y'all can't wait for the markets to crash to tell the story right. In fact, if we had told the story more correctly at first (an error the size of Italy!) the markets might not have crashed.

Saying things you know and adding "citation needed" is the solution. Acknowledge your bias and move forward.

Nate Silver is speaking your language today.

Randnotell (talk) 23:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It is one of the strange quirks of Wikipedia that its policies and guidelines prohibit employees of Standard and Poor's from contributing to Wikipedia's content about Standard and Poor's, per WP:CONFLICT, WP:PRIMARY, WP:AUTOBIO and especially WP:YOURSELF. In other words, the people who know best - the people who were there and saw what happened first-hand - are prohibited from contributing and editing Wikipedia's content about themselves and their activities. Deterence ^Talk 11:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

POV

The graphic shown on this page has POV against Democrats and against black people, because it shows that de debt decreased during George W. Bush tenure, and increased during Obama’s tenure, it should be erased, because it gives arguments to christian fascists like those mad men of the Tea Parties, and also it is racist, because it implies Obama can’t manage the economy just because he is African-American.

200.175.215.242 (talk) 18:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Mr. IP Address, no one should ever have a point of view. http://xkcd.com/261/ Randnotell (talk) 00:11, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks a political leader can "manage" an economy need look no further than the ash heap of history. Obama's problems stem from his hard-lined radical ideology and his inability to realize that ideas that sound plausible to a law professor at a Chicago wine and cheese might not work in the real world. --AntigrandiosË^Talk 03:07, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Why is Obama's ideology radical?Randnotell (talk) 03:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Which of the many graphics is Anon IP referring to? How does macroeconomic data imply anything about a President's race? I think it is safe to assume that Anon IP 200.175.215.242 is trolling and should be ignored. Deterence ^Talk 11:48, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

That's where you're wrong, Deterence, my friend. Not all trolls should be ignored, you know that. In my mind, Mr. Grandiose here is trolling. I'm simply using the wrong talk page.Randnotell (talk) 13:00, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think Anon is "trolling" anyway. I get the impression he's a critic of the current administration and he's trying to sound ridiculous to make those he is truly against look bad.Jersey John (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Intro is confused and unhelpful

This subject is detailed, but the intro is very poor. Shouldn't it explain what the debt is, and what the deficit is? The paragraphs seem to munge together useless facts in no appreciable order. The debt is the total of all deficits and surpluses over time. The deficit is a negative amount left over from all receipts and obligations in a fiscal year. Simple. Yet nowhere in the intro does it say this! 67.169.49.52 (talk) 03:30, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Consistent wording

US or U.S. (or even United States)? The article needs consistency on how that particular term should be used, as currently it jumps between them throughout. Personally, I'd veer towards US (in place of U.S.), but I'd prefer some hearing of the matter before editing. —JeevanJones (talk) 17:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Go with "U.S." "US" looks too much like "us." If you run into the end of the sentence, either do two periods ("I live in the U.S.. But the world is also nice.") or one ("I live in the U.S. But the world is also nice.") Probably go with one, I think two looks too weird.Randnotell (talk) 03:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

See WP:MOS#Abbreviations for guidance, where this particular instance is discussed (in summary: "U.S." is commoner in American usage, "US" is commoner elsewhere; as this article concerns an American topic, the American usage is probably more appropriate, per WP:TIES). As for two periods at the end of the sentence, this is explicitly discouraged at WP:Manual_of_Style_(abbreviations)#Full_stops. HTH. Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Article is too focused on recent events

I came to this article and along with its sister articles on wikipedia, there is no substantive information regarding anything before 1900, and little for before 2000. This seems more like a political talking points page than a real demonstration of how the United States debt has evolved. I am unqualified to fix this situation, but I would hope someone is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anti dan (talk • contribs) 04:30, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Similar Presidential Debt Graph

I'd really like to see a graph similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg but rather than Presidents, have the Congressional parties of power; e.g. 2006-2010 would be colored blue for Democrat majority. Or maybe instead a combination of Congressional and Executive party. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emann15 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

There was one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_Color_Coded_Congress_Control_and_Presidents_Highlighted.png. But, it has been removed. You'll have to take it up with the editors as to why it was removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.64.208.126 (talk) 20:54, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

This Article is too long.

Needs to be shortened for the layman. It's supposed to be an Encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.93.109.45 (talk) 09:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the average layman will find this article of acceptable length which is quite similar to that of an encyclopedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okinny (talk • contribs) 14:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Objective Sourcing

With an obvious focus on current events it is important to ensure that the opinions offered in any such article be objective. Quoting any director of the OBM as to the cause of any fiscal issue is a bit like asking a drug addict why he/she takes drugs. You will surely get some admission to self involvement but the lion share of the blame will be placed on the previous administration when that administration belongs to the opposing political party. Right or wrong, that viewpoint is immediately suspect and, thereby, invalid. Further, while the New York Times may have been the paper of record at one time, it has shown itself to be wildly bias and indifferent to the truth and is no longer a reliable source even when reporting or quoting reliable sources since they often distort or misrepresent even those sources. There are other examples within the article. Suffice to say that objective sources ought to be the rule without exception. Failure in this matter makes the entire article useless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okinny (talk • contribs) 14:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

When was the original debt ceiling legislation passed?

When was the original debt ceiling legislation passed? Of secondary importance, but not irrelevant, when where amendments passed? Did they all raise the ceiling—were there other amendments? JDAWiseman (talk) 08:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Graphs should be a log scale.

The exponential nature of the graph makes it difficult to read much information out of the left side of any of the graphs because the graph is dominated by the more recent data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.194.218.50 (talk) 03:19, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Add public debt as a percent of GDP (2011) world map, for USA comparison.

Add from Government debt ...

Public debt as a percent of GDP (2011)

99.19.45.64 (talk) 02:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The term "public debt" in the U.S. is not accurately portrayed in the graph. Public debt in the U.S. relative to GDP is around 66%, around $10 trillion of our $15 trillion debt. Total debt is about 100%, which includes the Social Security surplus amounts and other amounts owed to citizens for specific purposes.19:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Chart showing where debt comes from

I.E., what percent and/or numbers have been created for current wars and past wars, cabinet spending, stimulus and bailout programs, interest as part of current debt, social security/medicare/other trustfunds, etc. The only thing close to that on Wikipedia now is this chart from 2001-2009 that has been questioned. The best one I've found - Pub. Domain by government, but even searching non-gov. sites - is at “A Citizen's Guide to the 2008 Financial Report of the U.S. Government”, so maybe I should just put it up on commons and then on some of these related articles. Maybe replace one of the plethora of charts on who it is owed to. Would like to see one that breaks down military/defense/homeland security vs. civilian spending. CarolMooreDC 17:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

POV

--cut here---

• According to a retrospective Brookings Institute study published in 1998 by the Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Committee (formed in 1993 by the W. Alton Jones Foundation), the total expenditure for U.S. nuclear weapons from 1940 to 1998 was $5.5 trillion in 1996 Dollars. The total public debt at the end of fiscal year 1998 was $5,478,189 million in 1998 Dollars or $5.3 trillion in 1996 dollars. The entire public debt in 1998 was therefore equivalent to the funds spent on the research, development, and deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-related programs during the Cold War.

-- cut here --

I cut this because it seems to be making a point, and not one that is neutral. One could just as well argue that "all the expenditure on the cold war including nuclear weapons, ever, does not make 6 months national deficit in 2012." Rich Farmbrough, 21:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC).

Is the source reliable? I'd say yes, so I'd say the sourced claims stay. The equivalence can be removed though. 0¹⁸ (talk) 18:23, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

federal debt vs. public debt

In many countries public debt refers to the total debt of federal government, states and local government debt together. That is then taken versus the GDP. Somehow the statistics in the case of USA differs in that way that it consists only of federal debt? For example: It is not clear from the article if the debt of California is part of the official 62%, or is it 100%? It is very confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.123.114.133 (talk) 06:26, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

This is just federal debt. State debt is separate. "Debt held by the public" is about 70% GDP; "Intragovernmental debt" is owed to specific program recipients such as for Social Security. The debt held by the public plus intragovernmental debt is about 100% GDP.Farcaster (talk) 18:37, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Moved text

This article was quite long, so I've moved some text from here to History of the United States public debt, Political debates about the United States federal budget, and Deficit reduction in the United States. AnomieBOT should be along to fix the broken refs, but I'll check up tomorrow to make sure that they get fixed. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 01:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC) THE ARTICLE DOESN'T HAVE UP TO DATE INFO. I WANT TO KNOW THE BREAKDOWN OF HOLDERS OF US DEBT IN 2011 NOT 2008. GET THE DATA UPDATED. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.63.202.17 (talk) 22:45, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Questions?

I'm not certain how to ask questions regarding the content in this thread. But I question the estimate of the Bush Tax Cuts causing a $3B budget variance, when according to Fact-Checker @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/revisiting-the-cost-of-the-bush-tax-cuts/2011/05/09/AFxTFtbG_blog.html the 10 year cost of the tax cuts was $1.3 trillion. If we are counting the Obama extension of these cuts, which takes the Total to $2.8 trillion, then shouldn't the extension be known as the Obama tax cuts, since they occurred during his administration? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.57.18.85 (talk) 12:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Good question. The most relevant citation is from the CBO below. CBO estimated the causes of an $11.7 trillion "swing" for the worse in our debt position from 2001 projections to 2011 actual. They estimate the Bush tax cuts (EGTRRA and JGTRRA) at $1.5 trillion in reduced revenue from 2001-2011. EGTRRA is the single largest line item in the causes. All legislative revenue actions (including extension of the Bush tax cuts in 2010, stimulus, payroll tax cuts, etc.) added up to $2.8 trillion. The slow economy resulted in another $3.3 trillion in revenue losses, for a total revenue impact of $6.1 trillion. Increased outlays were $5.7 trillion. So according to CBO, our "revenue problem" was bigger than our "spending problem" in terms of this swing. CBO-Changes in Baseline Projections Since January 2001 Farcaster (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

CBO also estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts from 2011-2020 would add about $3.3 trillion to the debt, about $2.65 trillion in foregone tax revenue plus another $0.66 trillion for interest and debt service costs. See table 1.7 on page 24 of this: CBO-Budget and Economic Outlook Farcaster (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Just adding info here that the report says on page 26 that if the laws were extended just for married taxpayers with income below $250,000 and single taxpayers with income below $200,000—as the President has proposed—the total added would be about $2 trillion (I think that is vs. $2.65 trillion -- rounded up to 2.7 there). Also, a better url for this is http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11705/08-18-update.pdf Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:32, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Debt and Deficit

There is no reason to mention the trade deficit without disussing any relationship the debt and the trade deficit may have. Clarifying the difference between the concepts, which may be helpful to a reader, seems like it would be outside the scope of this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.4.239.48 (talk) 18:43, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

So how much ??

Seriously, I've read this article maybe five or six times. I still don't have any bearing on how much the US federal debt actually is. Could we find a way to make a table? 1999, the debt is $X, 2000, $Y... it seems silly to me that the article on the United States Public Debt doesn't actually say how much the United States Public Debt actually is.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Update needed?

Some of the information/graphs in this article are 3-4 years old, it seems like it could use an update. Blm (talk) 15:30, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree, all of the charts are updated as of 2010. Can anyone find or make some new charts and graphs so that people can get more up to date information? 75.161.86.228 (talk) 16:54, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Charts missing deficit data

The deficit in percent of GDP is the appropriate measurement of the change in public debt. However, there is no mention of this in the page. The statistic is also not in the charts. --Robert Wm "Ruedii" (talk) 09:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Charts out of date

need to be updated--71.91.189.48 (talk) 01:10, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

chart of gross debt in dollars

Chart of gross debt in dollars indicates DEFLATION TO 2010 dollars. Why? I seems to me that it should show dollars adjusted by CPI or GDP Deflator, i.e. deflation to 1970(or other) dollars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Engmk (talk • contribs) 14:07, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Negative real interest rates

I was confused by this revert which says, "Perhaps so, but putting the two together is WP:OR/WP:SYN". Putting which two together? Synthesizing what? Is there a way to rephrase without deleting to make it OR-free? Paum89 (talk) 02:33, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, you've got Mark Thoma who talks about negative real interest rates. And then you add the chart from Treasury. But does Thoma talk about the chart or what might happen in the future or what recent rates have been? From what I see, no. It is the connection between these two sources -- that you made when you talk about the trend or lack of guarantee -- which violates OR/SYN.

It looks like you are a new editor (based on your edit count), but you are contributing with an unusual degree of sophistication. (I wish my first steps had been so skillful!) As you are new, rest assured that other editors will look at your recent contributions. If they make similar reversions, take it as a lesson in proper editing practices. And I'm confident that other editors will contribute to this discussion. So please be patient. If I am wrong, they will let me/us know.--S. Rich (talk) 02:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I thought the comment about there being no guarantee that the low interest rates will continue would avoid the implication that debt is suddenly good, which would be a WP:SYN implication I wanted to avoid. I'm a long-time IP editor here, but I don't want to give away my employer, etc. Here are some other sources which discuss the implications:

• "governments that enjoy such low borrowing costs can improve their creditworthiness by borrowing more, not less, and investing in improving their future fiscal position even assuming no positive demand stimulus effects of a kind likely to materialize with negative real rates. They should accelerate any necessary maintenance project – issuing debt leaves the state richer not poorer, assuming that maintenance costs rise at or above the general inflation rate."[2]
• "for the United States and the United Kingdom, the annual liquidation of debt via negative real interest rates amounted on average to 3 or 4% percent of GDP a year…which quickly accumulated (without compounding) to a 30 to 40% of GDP debt reduction in the course of a decade."[3]
• "there might be two ways out of Japan's fiscal trap.... The other way is to use monetary policy to create negative real interest rates for a very long period of time. If that can be done in a stable way (without accelerating inflation) and if stable growth persists, then Japan can use an "inflation tax" to erode the value of its government debt instead of an actual tax."[4]
• "the US Treasury can borrow at negative real interest rates, i.e. the real yield on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). To be clear, investors expect to take a loss when they buy US Treasuries, but investors keep buying them anyway because the alternatives are so much worse.... If that's not a good argument for Congress and Pres. Obama to enact a new economic stimulus package and run larger budget deficits, then I don't know what is."[5] (has an animated illustration)
• "It was the unanimous view of the committee that Treasury should modify auction regulations to permit negative rate bidding and awards in Treasury bill auctions as soon as feasible."[6] (that quote on the CNBC source is originally from the US Treasury at [7])

Perhaps the first of those, by Lawrence Summers, would make a better reference than the Mark Thoma blog? I'm interested in what everyone has to say about this. Paum89 (talk) 03:15, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The difficulty I see is with the horse and cart of the edit. If you gave background about rates (using the chart), and then added the Thoma (or other) commentary, that would work better. Something like "Treasury rates have been blah-blah-blah for the last year. [Insert reference]. Economists like Thoma, Summers, Hayek, whomever, have commented on those rates saying they represent negative interest and are thus a great opportunity to do such-and-such." But the edit you supplied had the additional comment "There is no guarantee that such rates will continue, but the trend has remained falling or flat ..." The chart/reference you supplied simply had the trend depicted. And the chart, as a source, did not talk about guarantees. The guarantee observation was your commentary, and it was coupled with the observation about the trend, which implied that low rates would continue. That was the WP:OR.

Also, thanks for your clarification on long-time IP editing. You might add such a comment to your userpage. I have extremely limited knowledge on sockpupperty, but I realized you were not a newbie and I wondered if you violating the rules.--S. Rich (talk) 15:53, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

How's this: [edited further by Paum89 (talk) 20:35, 24 October 2012 (UTC)]

Since 2010, the U.S. Treasury has been obtaining negative real interest rates on government debt. Negative real interest rates on government debt occur when the market believes that there are no alternatives with sufficiently low risk, or when popular institutional investments such as insurance companies, pensions, or bond, money market, and balanced mutual funds are required to invest large sums in Treasury securities to hedge against risk. Lawrence Summers, Matthew Yglesias and other economists state that at such low rates, government debt borrowing saves taxpayer money, and improves creditworthiness. In the late 1940s through the early 1970s, the US and UK both reduced their debt burden by about 30% to 40% of GDP per decade by taking advantage of negative real interest rates, but there is no guarantee that government debt rates will continue to stay so low. In January, 2012, the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association unanimously recommended that government debt be allowed to auction even lower, at negative absolute interest rates.

That has the recommended order, more reliable sources, and slightly more background info. Paum89 (talk) 20:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

How do I, the rather ordinary and poorly informed reader, know reference 1 chart is describing negative interest rates -- is it because the squiggly line drops below zero in 2010? And how does the chart show these are government debt auctions? (Also, are there other views about the wizzdom of such borrowings?) And what do those econ whizzes say if that squiggly line keeps dropping? It got up to positive 4 in 2008, will it drop to negative 4 later? What would be the good things about that development, if it occurred? --S. Rich (talk) 21:24, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Good points. I'll look around for some more sources on those topics and get back here. Paum89 (talk) 23:29, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444900304577577192417116440.html is a great source that touches on most of those questions, but it's behind a paywall. I'll try to find more....

http://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2011/res2/pdf/crbs.pdf is excellent as a source and as a thorough explanation, and corroborates the PIMCO source which was down yesterday....

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/30/why_are_we_collecting_taxes_.html is an op-ed but short and written for a wide audience. Let me see if I can integrate these sources to address those questions. Paum89 (talk) 18:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Paum89, I'll like to join Srich in welcoming you, and that we appreciate your work contributing to Wikipedia. Something you should know though is that the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, so the first place to make additions to an article is in the body of the article. Only later, if the additions have significantly changed the article would you add to the lead. The lead's like an executive summary of a study. If you pass around a study in your workgroup, you wouldn't expect people to just add things into the executive summary. If they have significant additions, they should add those issues into the body of the study first, and then if it is justified, edit the summary to reflect the new additions. It's really only kosher to edit the lead without changing the body if the lead isn't a good summary of the article. Then, you would edit the lead to better reflect what the article actually says. FurrySings (talk) 13:31, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Right; a new section with one or more paragraphs would be called for before a summary sentence in the intro. Question: the (poorly formatted) full text of that Wall Street Journal article in the URL above is available at [8] -- is it better to link there or to the version that's behind the paywall? Paum89 (talk) 05:15, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to try inserting the paragraph as it stands above with the seven references (all of which should have full texts to answer the questions which have been raised) and with luck we can go from there with ordinary editing instead of staging here. Paum89 (talk) 20:35, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Replacing fractional reserve with full reserve banking

I don't know what to think of this: "A revolutionary paper by the International Monetary Fund claims that one could eliminate the net public debt of the US at a stroke, and by implication do the same for Britain, Germany, Italy, or Japan." -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-away-debt-and-dethrone-bankers.html It links to the IMF staff paper at [9]. I saw this being discussed here. Paum89 (talk) 20:13, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The US can be debt free in fifty years with quantitative easing. The government borrowing their IOU's from the central bank's management of the bank of clearance ( The domestic bank of clearance is the managing of the loan IOU's the banks lend themselves when we borrow from them which we are taught to call the bank muliplier effect and a fractional banking system (but with enlightenment understand there is not limit to the bank muliplier effect hence worldwide quantitative easing from Japan to Europe.) The government borrowing from an almost zero percent interest rate from the federal reserve creates cost savings giving birth to future government surpluses, which are ample, to pay back over the next two generations the old debt and the new M4 money supply borrowed debt. Government debt can be navigated into prosperity. --Prettyladieslover (talk) 04:20, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Critique of IMF paper. The IMF paper suggestion for 100 percent reserve requirement for deposits for banks for all practical purposes is not the real world and does not address why a bank would lend it's funds then. Banks lend funds they do not have. Banks do not lend funds they own. Hence the bank bailout, or convert those deposits into currency. Low reserve equity requirements for banks is the reason funds are available for people to borrow.

The IMF paper in a modern context is yes the US debt could be paid back immediately with 16 trillion in paper cash -- and by adjusting the bank lending reserve cash requirements -- would create an immediate need for large amounts of cash for the domestic housing market (inflate the housing prices), and after this cash is consumed by the 100 percent full reserve bank deposit requirments, later the full reserve system can be converted back away from paper back to the computer screen. Prefer plan one: managing the electronic bank of clearance -- over the IMF paper's plan two: the paper plan exit route. --Prettyladieslover (talk) 02:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Unhelpful nominalization and other shortcomings

Section 3, Debt Ceiling, states: "The U.S. government proposes a federal budget every year, which must be approved by Congress." 'The U.S. government' is far too vague. I came to this page because I don't know how the debt ceiling works and I want to learn. I know the Executive Branch, the House, the Senate and the Judicial Branch each have budgets they publish periodically (probably also the Pentagon and every government agency). They are all 'the U.S. government' and none of them is. Who, exactly, proposes this budget and does it include all these other budgets? Is it the same as the Executive budget or separate from it? Also, "extraordinary measures" further down in the section, needs at least one concrete example. The first paragraph, about the Bond Act of 1917 is very clear. The limit applied to the total amount of issue in bonds. Then things get vague: "nearly all federal debt" - what has been added to bonds? "The Treasury is authorized to issue debt needed to fund government operations..." - does that mean or include regular issuing of currency or is the distinction between bonds and currency inmaterial? Sorry, I know this is a difficult topic to write about, but I'm just not finding what I need to know on this page. Can someone fix, please?Baon (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Clarified government; changed to U.S. president and linked the federal budget process article.Farcaster (talk) 00:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Gave an example of extraordinary measures and included a link to the Geithner letter, which spells out the measures.Farcaster (talk) 00:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Issuance of currency is probably immaterial.Farcaster (talk) 00:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

United States credit default

Should be merged into this article or possibly not at all. Seems like a trivial mention that has not received the depth of coverage or asserts any lasting effects to warrant a standalone article. Mkdw^talk 18:04, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is a good idea!--I am One of Many (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Deficits vs. National Debt Increases

The article contains a nice chart titled "Total Deficits vs. National Debt Increases," which shows that each increase in national debt is significantly larger than the corresponding deficit.

Two in particular stand out:

• In 2001, there was a budget surplus, yet the national debt still increased.
• In 2008, the budget deficit was under $500 billion yet the national debt increased by more than twice as much (about $1000 billion).

This goes against the popular misconception that the national debt is simply the cumulative effect of all previous deficits. In fact, national debt is much greater than the cumulative effect of all previous deficits.

The article really ought to have a full explanation of why this is. 174.24.11.30 (talk) 16:14, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

See the section: Calculating the annual change in debt. Also, click on the chart for explanation.Farcaster (talk) 17:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Why is Federal Debt Not Depicted in the US Debt Chart?

In the two charts with black and red lines, labeled 'U.S. debt from 1940 to 2011' there are black and red lines, gross debt and public debt. Gross debt being the public debt plus federal debt. I understand public debt being private debt of individuals and businesses. I came to this article in search of the federal debt. And I found private debt, and something almost completely useless, called gross debt, out of which I cannot decipher federal debt. So why are we getting private and gross debt here instead of federal debt? Fixthedebt.org is one of probably many organizations displaying charts that look like that one, while campaigning to cut the federal debt. But the chart does not depict federal debt. Is this some sort of mistake? Rtdrury (talk) 04:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we can clarify it. National Debt = Debt held by the public intragovernmental debt. The National debt is the gross debt (black line) while the debt held by the public is the red line. The difference is the intragovernmental debt. Securities owned by investors are the debt held by the public. The intragovernmental debt is owed to particular programs, such as Social Security.Farcaster (talk) 23:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Intergenerational equity

This statement -- "For every dollar of debt held by the public, there is a government obligation (generally marketable Treasury securities) counted as an asset by investors. Future generations benefit to the extent these assets are passed on to them, which by definition must correspond to the level of debt passed on." -- isn't correct as it stands. The bonds "passed on" to future generations via inheritance or gift do not "by definition" correspond to the level of public debt. The U.S. Treasury Department sells bonds, which carry a maturity (up to 30 years). When the bonds expire, the Treasury must sell new bonds. Future generations will purchase bonds to finance a given amount of debt. Say the debt is 100% of GDP. That doesn't mean that bonds worth 100% of GDP will be transferred by inheritance and gift to future generations. (There's a secondary issue here with estate taxation, which means that even when assets are "passed on," their full value isn't.)--Jsorens (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I believe they do by definition. Unless there are immortals running around. The debt is always offset by an equal amount of assets; that is why the debt exists. Let's use an example. Let's say a bunch of 30-year bonds are invested in by Generation 1 during a big debt run-up, then all dies on the same day and leaves the bonds to Generation 2. When the 30-year bonds mature, the government has to pay them off and issues new bonds to do so, giving the heirs in Generation 2 the cash and getting money from those in Generation 2 that want Treasuries and those in Generation 3. Sure, if everyone suddently decides not to buy treasuries, that is a fiscal crisis, but this is extremely unlikely. Either way, Generation 2 gets the money. I do agree on the tax point, although it is probably immaterial.Farcaster (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The bottom line is that the asset value passed on to the second generation does not equal the debt that must be paid by the second generation. New bonds must be sold to the second generation to cover the difference. Whether certain scenarios are "unlikely" or not doesn't pertain to a definitional question.--Jsorens (talk) 16:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

You cannot pass a liability to a subsequent generation without passing the asset. It is impossible. Each dollar of debt the government has at any point is offset by investors who own the assets. But I think the point is made whether the text you removed is there or not.Farcaster (talk) 19:09, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Federal government agencies?

The opening sentence of the article reads "The United States public debt is the money borrowed by the federal government of the United States through the issuing of securities by the Treasury and other federal government agencies." What federal government agencies? I don't think this is ever explained or expanded in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bondwonk (talk • contribs) 14:47, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

US Public Debt vs US Private Debt

Something's missing here. If there's a page dedicated to "United States Public Debt", why isn't there one so titled for "United States Private debt"? If understanding the "debt ceiling" invokes this page on "United States Public Debt", why not one similarly titled and detailed called "United States PRIVATE debt"?

Understanding the economic buzz surrounding the term "debt ceiling" might be easier to grasp if there was a similarly titled page called "United States PRIVATE Debt". I know I'd like to compare and contrast the two concepts. I'd write it myself, but I don't know what I'm doing, and the person who wrote and formatted the former should also format and write the latter to better contrast the two concepts (besides, quite frankly I don't even know what balancing a checkbook means ([email protected]).

Also, the article frequently refers to "total debt". Total debt includes public (government) debt, personal debt and corporate debt for both financial and non financial corporations. All references to "total debt" should be qualified as "total public debt" or more clearly "total governmental debt". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.130.7 (talk) 08:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me and maybe I'm writing in the wrong place but isn't the total federal government debt the face value of currently outstanding treasury securities minus the purchase price, not simply the face value alone? The total value of new u.s. treasury securities the average month this year will likely exceed 1 trillion dollars, but the treasury receives about 900 billion in the purchase price back. So the gross marketable treasury securities outstanding must have a value of around 200 trillion at any given time, I'm guessing. I imagine this is necessary to establish bond liquidity and dollar stability among other things.

Where's the Money?

The article doesn't explain what's happened to all those trillions of Dollars that have been borrowed. Where are they? Do they form the basis for the US Dollar and the Money Supply? Isn't unlimited growth of the Debt a form of debasement? It might be useful to include a discussion of the relationship between the National Debt and the Money Supply and why the two don't match up. Virgil H. Soule (talk) 17:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

About half of it has gone to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security recipients. 15-20% has gone to the military-industrial complex. The rest has disappeared into various nooks and crannies - the War on Drugs, NASA, Pell grants, quail sex research, et cetera. I think what you're trying to ask is "where has the inflation gone?" - why creating 20 trillion dollars' worth of government debt and injecting that money into the economy hasn't somehow resulted in 20 trillion more cash dollars floating around in the economy. The answer, as best as I understand it, is that the inflation has been sent into the future and the surplus money is temporarily being removed from circulation. It's like printing $100 bills with notes on them saying "not legal tender until ten years from now", and selling them for $95 each in real money to actually pay the government's expenses. However, someone who knows more about the subject might be able to correct me or provide more detail.

Government Shutdowns

In "Relationship to appropriation process" the 2013 shutdowns should be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GioCM (talk • contribs) 18:10, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Chicago plan revisited

Re [10], none of the sources in the removed paragraph look unreliable to me, and some of them are clearly prestigious commentary on the original IMF documentation. What kind of an RS is needed here? EllenCT (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Foreign holders - grouped economic areas

I recently revised the Foreign holders of US Treasury securities table to include collapsible lists for each separate jurisdiction of the three grouped economic areas per the Treasury's monthly holdings report (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt). I also changed the order of those jurisdictions within each group list based on either estimated or exact volumes of holdings:

For the Treasury report's listings of "Caribbean banking centers" and "United Kingdom" (see note below) economic areas, I simply used the Treasury's annual survey to determine which jurisdictions are the more significant holders of securities: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/shla2013r.pdf. Example - in the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are clearly the major contributors, so it's sensible to list them before Bahamas, Panama, etc.

For "Oil exporters", I used a combination of known values from the same annual survey (Indonesia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are listed separately there) and relative volumes of the remaining countries' oil outputs divided between the additional holdings breakdowns of "Middle East oil exporters" and "African oil exporters". My main source for the oil data was CIA World Factbook, but I'm open to other suggestions in that regard.

Additionally, the economic area which the Treasury lists as "United Kingdom" but which includes the Crown Dependencies (which are NOT part of the United Kingdom) should properly be listed as the British Islands. Farolif (talk) 01:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

---Hmmm?--- "The measure of the public debt is the value of the outstanding Treasury securities that have been issued by the Treasury and other federal government agencies.[which?]"

Is this "which" tag necessary in this sentence? The federal agencies that owe portions of the debt are variable... and they fluctuate, correct? Unless someone were to update the article daily with a laundry list of agencies, it does not seem very likely that measuring which agencies owe is reasonable. It may however be more reasonable, to portray a not all-encompassing list within the contexts of a given year as in a table. 107.147.68.11 (talk) 04:05, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Payment?

Hi,

I watch the debt clock often, and in the last 4 days we had 2 very large increases, is it because salary/wage (or how you call it?) for the people that get their money from Uncle Sam? We would have there: over 1,375,000 active US Military unknown (but large) number of civilian workers, and ~23,635,800 "Goverment Employees"... and over 45,2 million americans who get Food Stamps (was already higher after the Crisis which started in 2007, its going down since the job market is recovering).

Of course we have not only wages... prisoners need food/electricity, the Army needs money for fuel, spare parts and new projects for example in the "Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation" which was 63.347 billion in Fiscal Year 2013. On last Wednesday the debt clock was standing at around 18,610 billion debt... than in 2 large steps it increased to almost 18,662 billion...

How are federal employees paid? I know that many things in the US are paid weekly? Rent for flat? In Europe or at least Germany and Poland we do not have such things. I also heard that some private working people are paid weekly??

Greetings Kilon22 (talk) 12:16, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what they are doing in Washington these days... maybe the Military needs money from the "Oversea Contingent Operations Fund" or how it is called already much earlier because of the flights in Syria and Iraq. I mean most of these costs there are for Kerosene fuel and ammunition. But not only the french deployed the only non-US nuclear aircraft carrier to attack "ISIL", the US got ships there too. The USS Carl Vinson, USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS George H.W. Bush have been there as a carrier strike group, all nuclear powered too. But this does not mean it is not expensive to have them on sea. Food is needed, the desalination of water to drinkable water costs much energy too, also electricity for ship systems and for the soldiers private consumption (smartphones, small tablets/notebooks, thousands of lights all over the ship, maybe heating depends on where they are and weather) for the crew of over 5,000 (USS Carl Vinson even over 6,000 crew), the propulsion consists of 4 shafts with 194,000 kW. Using the energy means that the uran fuel rods will not last soo long since they are used.

But this is a long term thing like with a car, you drive one kilometer and it losses worth slowly because of this. Kerosene and food are brought by non-nuclear "Replenishment oiler" which bring diesel, kerosene, ammunition, food to all the ships with their own propulsion, in many cases diesel engines and not very strong, the ships usually are not very fast. But the new "Supply Class" for example got 4 of the very popular General Electric LM2500 gas turbines with 78,000 kW (105,000 hp). But the size and tanks for the crude oil/fuels limit the speed even for this class at 26 knots, many other oilers with diesel engines were much slower (14-16 knots) but therefore the fuel use was low compared to the gas turbines. For the aircraft carrier food and jet fuel is the most they need if they fly many missions. Depends how close they are to the territory and how much the fighters/bombers have to fly over the water into Syria/Iraq... I know they use a lot of aircraft there and each of it has a capacity of some thousand liters each, with special drop tanks even more, and they need every liter... the fact that one liter of jet fuel has a weight of 0.775 - 0.800 kg per Liter. This means a machine with 4.000 kg internal fuel capacity can take ~5,000 Liters or even a bit more to reach the 4,000kg. The drop tanks with 250 Liters has a weight of around ~200 kg only...

In less than 2 Weeks the US Debt Clock increased from ~18,610 billion to ~18,704 billion... why?! I mean that is already ~30% of the whole planned deficit for the Fiscal Year 2016 (1 October 2015 - 30 September 2016)!

Greetings Kilon22 (talk) 12:46, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Another extreme rise! 18.776 trillion debt now! I don't know what's going on there, I did read something that money for someone is needed, but in this amounts?! Costs for the Operations in Syria and Iraq (and slightly increased ground troops with equipment in Kuwait and a few in the desert border region of Saudi-Arabia and Iraq)? Kuwait is logistical no problem, and desert... not really too, a few flights with the large Boeing CH-47 Chinook... I will upgrade per capita and per taxpayer debt again Kilon22 (talk) 10:31, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

€dit: I found another way, not so cool but it does its effect, I just forgot something, but I will do not anopther 5th edit, or can I put the 4 edits together to one?! I did not wanted to spam, I just did not realize it for hours (look at times) that the www was wrong since I had the Debt Clock already opened I did not try to open it through the link there, later I tried and it failed and I corrected it as good as I could in a short period of time...

Reference

Hey, I updated the statistics very often in the last weeks, I have a question about a reference:

• The national debt equates to $58,650 per person U.S. population, or $158,280 per member of the U.S. working taxpayers, as of January 2016.<_ref>U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service (January 26, 2014). "United States Debt Clock".<_/ref>

Is there a way, that the "United States Debt Clock" appears first (down where the references are listed) and not the author first and title after the author?! Greetings from (Non-English) Europe ;) Sorry for spelling errors Kilon22 (talk) 15:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

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The chart depicting national dept with congressional control is wrong

The chart in National_debt_of_the_United_States#Debt_ceiling shows a divided congress for 2003 - 2004. The divided congress actually happened in 2001 - 2002. The facts quoted below are found in the footnotes for Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses:

"The Democratic Party controlled the 107th Congress from January 3 to January 20, 2001 (50/50 tie with Vice President Gore as the deciding vote) and from May 24, 2001 to January 3, 2003 (after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an Independent and caucus with the Democrats).

The Republican Party controlled the 107th Congress from January 20, 2001 (50/50 tie with Vice President Cheney as the deciding vote) until May 24, 2001, when Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an Independent and caucus with the Democrats.

In the 107th Congress (after May 24, 2001), and in the 108th Congress and 109th Congress, Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont, chose to caucus with the Democratic Party."

But in 2002 the Republicans won the majority in both houses of the congress and Jeffords didn't matter. The Republicans kept both houses of the congress from Jan. 2003 until Jan. 2007. I have no clue as to how to fix the graphic.The Trucker (talk) 07:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

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Where has the money gone?

Soapbox
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
A considerable amount of the Debt is bound up in accounts held in private hands and by the Federal Reserve as counted in the M2 and M3 money supply numbers. Those values, however, fall short of the number posted for the National Debt by several trillion dollars. Does anyone have any idea what's happened to it? Lost in bankruptcies? Strayed? Stolen? Foreign banks? Has anyone tried to account for it? Does anyone care? Virgil H. Soule (talk) 18:47, 22 May 2013 (UTC) Well, two-thirds of our debt comes from fiscal markets, and much of it is being sent to foreign banks and multinational corporations. So it wouldn't surprise me if the majority of our debt is stolen from plutocrats and their crony buddies. Yet Republicans, still to this day after reform of our welfare programs, love to believe most of our debt is being created from welfare recipents, which comprises a very small percentage of the entire government budget when combining discretionary and mandatory spending. I agree some aspect of our social security system needs reform (I support public works). What drives me crazy is how Republicans are too uneducated to understand that every time we cut taxes on the rich, our deficit skyrockets. Nashhinton (talk) 07:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

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Debt: inter, intra, and public

This edit caught my eye. The edit summary says: Paragraph 2 previously stated that that the US national debt was comprised of "intergovernmental debt" and "intergovernmental debt." Clearly someone made an error, as the second (and largest) components is "public debt." The edited assertion currently reads: "The US national debt can be divided between intragovernmental debt and public debt."

I dug back into the article history, and found this edit, which simplified an assertion saying "The US national debt can be divided between intragovernmental debt, also known as public debt, and intergovernmental debt." by removing the part which said that public debt is also known as intragovernmental debt.

This part of the article, as it currently stands, goes on to divide gross national debt into two components, which it names Debt held by the public and Debt held by government accounts or intragovernmental debt. This is alongside a figure which appears to divide national debt into two components named Public debt and intergovernmental holdings (in the figure) or intergovernmental debt (in the caption), and which does not show any intragovernmental component. (read that again, paying attention to inter vs. intra)

I don't really understand this stuff. so I went looking for further clarification. I found "FINANCIAL AUDIT : Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Fiscal Years 2015 and 2014 Schedules of Federal Debt" (PDF). Report to the Secretary of the Treasury. United States Government Accountability Office. That report includes a statement that, "As shown on the Schedules of Federal Debt, these balances consisted of approximately (1) $13,124 billion as of September 30, 2015, and $12,785 billion as of September 30, 2014, of debt held by the public and (2) $5,014 billion as of September 30, 2015, and $5,025 billion as of September 30, 2014, of intragovernmental debt holdings." From that statement, it appears that the $12 or $13 billion of "debt held by the public" ("public debt"??) is not exactly the same thing as the $5 billion or so of "intragovernmental debt".

That report goes on to say, "Intragovernmental debt holdings represent federal debt owed by Treasury to federal government accounts—primarily federal trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare [...]. intragovernmental debt holdings are not shown as balances on the federal government’s consolidated financial statements because they represent loans from one part of the federal government to another. [...] Under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, when the federal government’s financial statements are consolidated, those offsetting balances [speaking there, I think, about intragovernment debt] are eliminated." ("are eliminated"??) I see that the article mentions intragovernmental debt quite a lot. Intragovernmental debt, as I read that report, is eliminated in a consolidated statement of national debt.

I'm confused about inter, intra, and public debt. Also, as I've said, it seems to me that the figure mentioned above disagrees with the edited assertion as it currently stands. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:25, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Taking another look at that historical edit I linked above, I see that it is the next-to-last edit of a dozen consecutive edits by an anon which, taken together, amounted to this. Those edits. taken together, inserted the again-edited assertion which initially caught my eye here asThe US national debt can be divided between intragovernmental debt and intergovernmental debt. (that assertion seems to make sense). I also see that Public debt redirects to the Government debt article, which that article defines as the debt owed by a government. (re-edited) Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:30, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

My confusion must be getting tiresome, but I just noticed another thing. The Definition of public debt section of this WP article does not seem to give a clear the definition of that term. That section kicks off with a reference to this article, in which Paul Krugman talks about "debt owed to the public". That seems to be a very different thing than what is talked about by WP at Public debt→Government debt. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:44, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect data, tables, charts

Wish I had time to fix all of the tables and charts in this article - most are at best incomplete or years old, some are simply incorrect with bad source data. The deficit chart at the top of the article has a bad horizontal axis (skips 1980). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.136.227.247 (talk) 01:46, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Additionally, the main chart under "history of the national debt" cryptically shows projections. Why is it showing projections on a section that is historical? It's a total POV push. I don't have the time or expertise to fix either.69.255.44.231 (talk) 16:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I discovered two-year old vandalism by 173.188.131.109 completely unremarked upon, replacing the total debt of FY 2010 of $13,551 billion with the incorrect $12,311 billion. Will someone with a registered user name please place a vandalism notice on this user's IP address? 99.165.238.66 (talk) 07:36, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

This first graph (Percentage of Gross Domestic Product) has some program glitch, so that when the graphic is clicked on to enlarge, a page of code appears. May be an easy fix for some coder but not me. GeeBee60 (talk) 14:53, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that out-of-date graphs and charts are bad. Isn't there some way to generate new charts automatically?Jamesdowallen (talk) 11:47, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Nomination.

Most of this debt is nominated in what? In US dollars? --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii (talk) 00:47, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

CARES Act update needed.

The United States is currently spending upwards of $2.3 trillion fighting COVID-19, which was neither budgeted nor forecast at the beginning of 2020. What impact does this have on the national debt? BD2412 T 03:15, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Government debt gdp.png

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

A glitch in editing mode?

I was unable to update this article. Edit mode displays a partial or a blank page. Suggestions? Oceanflynn (talk) 18:34, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

The article is approximately 110K which is not so large that I would expect it to fail to load. You should be able to edit sections even if you can't edit the entire article, if there's some size limit holding you up on your end. If the problem persists on your current computer, you might want to try editing from a different device to see if you can identify where the 'glitch' is coming from. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:31, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Debt-to-GDP ratio is a duration, not a percentage

Wikipedia correctly points out here that the debt-to-GDP ratio is a duration, not a percentage, but follows the popular misconception of the percentage in this article and probably many others. FWIW, this is a pet peeve of mine and I would love to see it corrected, but I'm not going to attempt it unilaterally because the misconception is so widespread and correcting it in a few places might just increase confusion. Hashproduct (talk) 17:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not really here to cater to pet peeves. The section you indicated and deemed "correct" is not sourced to anything like a reliable source and, while it has a point in a simple mathematical dimensional analysis, it ignores the concept of time value of money which would apply whenever we consider a flow of monetary amounts over multiple years. I'm removing it. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 01:40, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Debt that other countries owe to the United States government

The USG owes 20 trillion dollars to various entities, but is also owed trillions of dollars by other countries. This is extremely relevant to any discussion of the US debt - if we owed 20 trillion but other countries owed us 30 trillion, then we'd actually be 10 trillion in the black, not 20 in debt. According to data.worldbank.org, our "net foreign assets" - which I'm told means foreign debt owned by the United States minus United States debt owned by foreign countries - is 190 billion dollars. Since foreign countries own $7.04 trillion of the US debt, this means other countries owe the USG $7.13 trillion.

The article should include a section about this, but it would need better sources. Can anyone find a direct source of this information, rather than calculating it? 73.70.13.107 (talk) 00:08, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

"The United States has the largest external debt in the world."

This is misleading to readers and says nothing substantive about U.S. debt. The U.S. has the largest debt because of the country's size. The meaningful information about debt is its share to GDP or some other relative measure. Keeping this text in serves to mislead readers into thinking the US debt is a serious problem and a massive aberration when it's not by any sensible measure. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:59, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The article has debt relative to GDP already before this, so the most common normalized measure is already discussed. It is a fact, which like all facts can be used in misleading ways, but is itself not deceptive. Barnhorst (talk) 15:30, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Irrelevant Information in History?

I couldn't help but notice how half of the paragraphs in the History section are about 2017-2018, with little insight on why these two years are relevant in the history of the national debt. Would it be better to shrink it down into a couple of sentences or erase it altogether? Springfield2020 (talk) 21:48, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

—————— I concur, I can only imagine it was added with the intent of making a particular administration\political party appear responsible for the US governments financial situation. There is another section labeled sustainability which blatantly does exactly what I've described. Another pressing issue with this article is the fact the history section does absolutely nothing to explain where this trend began, but to be fair it is a complex issue. With that said, It isn't hard to argue that the US's current situation is heavily influenced by the 2008 Subprime mortgage crisis and its effects, and even more importantly, the War On Terror that began in 2002. As 2002 began, the debt had slowly but surely worked its way up to 6 trillion. Year over year, it generally went up 100-200 billion at a time for the previous 20 or so years, yet from 2002-2010, we were able to destroy all the previous records and models, achieving the feat of MORE THAN DOUBLING the national debt. This makes it appear as if it were fully the G.W. Bush administration thats at fault, yet I believe several of the regulations Clinton cut and\or enacted directly lead to the financial meltdown of the 2000s housing market. As far as i know, these are the primary causes that have lead to our current debt situation in the US, being that the rate of incurring debt since then has slowed very little if at all year over year. We have been stuck in the Negative loop ever since we spent 5 trillion to attack the middle east.

In my opinion, for anyone to attempt to attribute this situation to the legacy of Obama or Trump is simply comical. Trying to do so implies a ignorance of recent US history, or an obvious political bias. (I will more then likely post a slightly modified version of this regarding the section under the "Sustainability" heading, as it is blatant in its political bias.) EZ CRIMSON (talk) 05:53, 1 August 2021 (UTC) ——————

<o>

FY 2013 Inventory Data (Appendix A).pdf 78.0.135.203 (talk) 05:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

FY 2013 Inventory Data (Appendix A).pdf 78.1.188.63 (talk) 05:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

President Nixon's term in office

Public debt as a percentage of GDP fell rapidly in the post-World War II period and reached a low in 1974 under Richard Nixon. 

THIS IS A GLARING ERROR AS PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON'S TERM IN OFFICE ENDED IN 1971, AFTER WHICH FORD ASSUMED THE OFFICE, AND HELD IT TILL JANUARY 2017, WHEN CARTER TOOK OVER AS PRESIDENT 88.245.197.59 (talk) 19:45, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Do not edit Wikipedia while drunk. Richard Nixon's term ended on August 9, 1974. Dimadick (talk) 23:34, 28 June 2023 (UTC)