Posts Tagged ‘US debt’

I’ve been playing around with Wolfram Alpha’s new computational knowledge engine and it seems to need a lot of work before it becomes more than an exotic curiosity. I entered the following query:

US Debt / US GDP

and it returns the following answer:

0.585 years (2007 estimate)

I’m not sure how to interpret that but it seems ominous!

US consumers need to break their bondage to bling. On the other hand, there is talk of public debt in the US rising from 40% of GDP to 80% and even higher over the next ten years. For perspective on where this would fall on the spectrum of public debt, take a look at the CIA factbook figures on public indebtedness by country.

Bear in mind, that government spending as a percentage of GDP is about 25%.  That means that the public debt will be rising from 160% of public spending to 320% of public spending. That’s some pretty hefty leverage from a government in an age when most “American people” have concluded that leveraging oneself to the hilt is no longer a core component of the American dream.