Exploding government debt is a national security issue
by Alex Benson, Jan 5, 2019, Newsrep

One hundred and five percent of GDP: This is the value of the total
debt owed by the United States. Put differently, the value of the debt
burden owed by the United States government is five percent larger
than the total value of all production and consumption in the U.S.
economy during the course of an entire year. We are not just talking
about profits—not just the growth of economic activity over and above
some baseline. No, the debt burden of the federal government is larger
than the U.S. economy itself.

Why does this matter? For one thing, in 10 years or (probably) less,
the government will spend more on servicing the interest on the
national debt than on defense. And this assumes the veracity of the
rosiest of interest rate and economic growth predictions. If the
economy enters a recession and interest rates rise faster than
expected with the Fed’s ever-so-gradual “tightening,” then the coming
debt explosion will arrive even earlier—something the U.S. can ill
afford in the event of a confrontation with Iran or, especially, a
peer-level conflict with the Chinese or the Russians. Getting out of
Syria may lessen the chances of the latter happening in the near
future, but the threat is in no way eliminated.

Of additional concern is the answer to the question, “who owns the
debt?” Much of it is held by the American public; that is, much of it
is held by U.S. citizens—around $6.89 trillion. In total, around $15.8
trillion, or 73 percent of total U.S. government debt, is held by
private investors, domestic funds, foreign investors, and
corporations. An alarmingly large $6.2 trillion of this total is held
by foreign investors, with the Chinese making up 19 percent or $1.18
trillion of that total. In the event of a peer-level conflict, the
Chinese would have a great deal of leverage over the United States.
The threat of flooding the market with its U.S. treasuries—collapsing
the price while driving up interest rates—would be a formidable weapon
of psychological and financial warfare.

Obviously the American debt problem is enormously problematic, as are
the national security implications of running trillion-dollar deficits
with a debt-to-GDP ratio over 100 percent before ramping up military
spending enormously to deal with a foreign state actor, but it does
not have to be the new normal. It is not as though a low debt-to-GDP
ratio is ancient history. As recently as 1974, total government debt
amounted to only 33.17 percent of GDP. At that time, the U.S. was
embroiled in the middle of the Cold War and was experiencing the
beginning of the economic malaise that characterized the 1970s. Yet
there was still room enough in the budget such that, less than a
decade later, President Reagan could blow out the deficit, largely
through increases in defense spending, to “bury” the Soviets (to use
their own term) and still leave office with a debt-to-GDP ratio of
48.8 percent.

If we can get a handle on runaway government spending and start to
bury the enormous debt burden the government has accumulated, then
perhaps there is a path to growing the economy out of a debt calamity,
putting ourselves in a position to nimbly and effectively respond to
the next large-scale foreign conflict. This, of course, must coincide
with radical reforms to Medicare and Social Security, the primary
drivers of the deficit each year, with a total present value of
underfunded future obligations that some estimates put as high as $127
trillion. But, in slashing debt burdens, as in all things, one step at
a time.

https://thenewsrep.com/112366/explod...ecurity-issue/

Tim+ Wrote in message:
Wrote in message:
Exploding government debt is a national security issue

Have a guess what "UK" in the group name stands for.

Idiot.

Tim


So you think his trolling **** is on topic for d.i.y. though?
--
Jim K


----Android NewsGroup Reader----
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Tim Streater wrote:

wrote:

Exploding government debt is a national security issue
by Alex Benson, Jan 5, 2019, Newsrep

One hundred and five percent of GDP: This is the value of the total
debt owed by the United States.

[snip stuff related to some strange foreign country]

Why are you telling us this?

Public debt (cia.gov):

United Kingdom

87.5% of GDP (2017 est.)
87.9% of GDP (2016 est.)

note: data cover general govt debt & include debt instruments issued
(or owned) by govt entities other than the treasury; the data include
treasury debt held by foreign entities; the data include debt issued
by subnational entities, as well as intragovernmental debt;
intragovernmental debt consists of treasury borrowings from surpluses
in the social funds, such as for retirement, medical care, and
unemployment; debt instruments for the social funds are not sold at
public auctions

United States

78.8% of GDP (2017 est.)
81.2% of GDP (2016 est.)

note: data cover only what the U.S. Treasury denotes as "Debt Held by
the Public," which includes all debt instruments issued by the
Treasury that are owned by non-US Govt entities; the data include
Treasury debt held by foreign entities; the data exclude debt issued
by individual US states, as well as intragovernmental debt;
intragovernmental debt consists of Treasury borrowings from surpluses
in the trusts for Federal Social Security, Federal Employees, Hospital
and Supplemental Medical Insurance (Medicare), Disability and
Unemployment, and several other smaller trusts; if data for
intragovernment debt were added, "gross debt" would increase by about
one-third of GDP