Now, I haven’t won a Nobel prize in a while; but, isn’t our debt $15.9 trillion and GDP $15.8 trillion.
Wouldn’t that make our ratio 100ish?
What flawed assumptions were used to make this propaganda.
They might not be including the Social Security bonds in the total because they are owed by the government to itself.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2012/opds122012.pdf lists how the debt is organized. It is roughly
$1.6 trillion in publicly held treasury bills,
$7.3 trillion in publicly held treasury notes,
$1.2 trillion in publicly held treasury bonds,
$0.8 trillion in inflation protected securities,
$0.5 trillion in publicly held non-marketable securities
and $4.8 trillion in government held non-marketable securities which is largely the Social security lockbox.
Exclude the intergovernmental holdings and we "only" have a debt of $11.6 trillion.
Well it looks like Krugman is using the ole’ social security slight of hand. The same slight of hand was used, btw, to give us our ‘Clinton Surplus’. The government simply borrowed enough from the SS Trust fund to make up for the annual deficit and said ‘looky, a surplus’.
I don’t buy the ‘government owes it to itself’ argument one bit...because the government doesn’t have any money! The SS trust fund is now running in the red every year...and last I checked the general fund was running a deficit...so, where does the government get this money, to pay to itself? Taxes.