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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (10037)	7/30/2004 3:00:20 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

From AD on the FOOL on the deficit One technical point that's vitally important here: It's the gross federal debt and deficits that matter, not the smaller "debt held by the public" and "unified budget deficit" that are generally cited in the press. For example, the most commonly reported estimate of the annual federal budget deficit is $478 billion for 2004. But this number is misleading, because it doesn't include borrowing from federal trust funds -- mostly Social Security (news - web sites) and Medicare. But the money the government is borrowing from Social Security and other trust funds will, with nearly 100% certainty, be paid back -- just like the money it borrows when it sells bonds to Bill Gates (news - web sites) or the Chinese government. The annual federal budget deficit is, therefore, $639 billion, according to the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites). This is 5.6% of GDP, a near-record level for the post-World War II era. In total, US federal debt now stands at 8.1 trillion or 67.5% of GDP and it is mushrooming. story.news.yahoo.com