It’s Official: America Is Now OVER $17 TRILLION in Debt

If you are a U.S. citizen, welcome to “This Week in Debt Slavery” with your loving host, Washington D.C.

The federal government opened back up after an over two-week shutdown on October 17, and was finally able to borrow money again. As soon as it did, the country’s national debt automatically jumped a record $328 billion dollars in a single day, officially pushing the United States over that often estimated $17 trillion-dollar national debt mark.

The debt now equals $17.075 trillion, according to figures the Treasury Department posted online on Friday.

The $328 billion increase shattered the previous high of $238 billion set two years ago.

The giant jump comes because the government was replenishing its stock of “extraordinary measures” — the federal funds it borrowed from over the last five months as it tried to avoid bumping into the debt ceiling. Under the law, that replenishing happens as soon as there is new debt space. (source)

From now on, when people talk about how the government is an insane, mind-blowing $17 trillion in the hole, they are no longer merely estimating or rounding up. The nation really is that financially far gone.

China, who holds the most U.S. debt overall, had this to say about the U.S. government’s default-avoidance deal:

“[P]oliticians in Washington have done nothing substantial but postponing once again the final bankruptcy of global confidence in the U.S. financial system,” government-run Chinese news agency Xinhua Thursday.

Wednesday’s vote, the commentary said, “was no more than prolonging the fuse of the U.S. debt bomb one inch longer.” (source)

This situation seems totally sustainable, doesn’t it?

Most people cannot even physically imagine what that much money would look like. We’re continually inundated with these large figures to the point where we are desensitized to the insanity — and millions, billions, trillions — these amounts stop holding the proper gravitas, the weight they should. Speaking of weight, a million dollars in $100 bills weighs 10 kg, so a billion dollars in $100 bills is over ten tons. (Don’t do the math on $17 trillion; the full weight of America’s debt reality might give you an aneurism.)

According to Demonocracy.info, a website with amazing infographics that really put our national debt into visual perspective, “If you spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, you would have not spent $1 trillion by now…”

Of course, no one really likes to talk about the additional $125 trillion in U.S. unfunded liabilities, such as Medicare, Social Security, and military and civil servant pensions…

(H/T to Mark13Records)