Jefferson's democracy

Franklin Jefferson's thoughts on the world

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Right now:

(from http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock)

$28,500 per person, at the moment.

Franklin Jefferson said...: FWIW the Bureau of Public Debt website is here:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm
and well worth reading.
Bureau of labor statistics keeps the inflation ("consumer price index") rate tables here:
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
Wikipedia also has a not bad article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._public_debt

Government accounting is hard to follow. Under Clinton,
the deficit (money out minus money in) was negative. Did the debt go down? That would look like a no brainer, but astonishingly, it depends on which government accounting practice you use, and most particularly, whether you are going adjust for inflation, and whether you are going to count the debt that the government owes TO ITSELF. It's a fascinating study, if you're fascinated by boring things.
This page discusses some of the accounting issues:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14756403/site/newsweek

This page discusses nominal and real debt
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/noll.publicdebt
(unfortunately the graph runs from 1861, and so it really compresses the last few decades-- that spike at the right side, just after the Clinton dip, is the G.W. Bush term).

This site will give you more graphs:
http://www.marktaw.com/culture_and_media/TheNationalDebt.html; 10/26/2006 11:02 AM