NKYKev

As of January 26, the national debt, according to the US Department of the Treasury, stands at $8,190,567,748,779.48 (source) - more than $5 billion over the debt ceiling of $8,184 trillion. It is amazing that in 1987 the debt was only $2.350 trillion. Here is an article discussing the issue.

FredIsMe

The American government knows China will be the next superpower and America will be screwed when that happens, so why not take as much money as they can to line their own pockets?

NKYKev

It does seem that a good deal of pocket lining is going on, for whatever the reason. The economic news keeps getting worse; the debt is rising faster than expected, and in March they are going to stop reporting the M-3 as well. Here is an article discussing possible reasons for the Fed to hide the money supply figures; this is from the article.

"So what about M-3 the past week? The latest figures show that on a seasonally adjusted basis, M-3 rose 27.3 billion last week, a 14.0 percent annualized clip, and is up $76 billion over the past month, a 9.8 percent growth rate. But those are the massaged numbers. For the raw figures, fasten your seat belt. Are you ready? M-3 was increased $58.7 billion last week (that does not include the huge Repo infusions noted above), a 30.0 percent annualized rate of growth. For the past two week, the Fed added $93.5 billion to the money supply, a 24.0 percent annual clip. Over the past 6 weeks it is up $192.9 billion, a 16.7 percent Banana Republic hyperinflationary pace. This is nuts, folks - unless there is an incredible risk out there we are not being told about. That is a lot of money for the Plunge Protection Team's arsenal to buy markets - stocks, bonds, currencies, whatever. This level of irresponsible money supply growth makes shorting markets hazardous, yet at the same time says markets are at huge risk of declining. Maybe M-3 growth doesn't stop the decline this time. Should be a fascinating storm in 2006."