One Weird Chart That Explains the Great Recession

Everybody knows that “greedy bankers” were to blame for the Crash of 2008. The Democrats and their willing accomplices told us that years ago and they are sticking to their story.

But there is another suspect that ought to be right in the dock along with the bankers. Its mild-mannered name is “agency debt.” It’s the debt of federal agencies and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that is not included in the National Debt. In other words, when you go to the U.S. Treasury’s Debt to the Penny page, and find that on September 27, 2015 the debt was $18,151,073,031,331.50 you wouldn’t find any agency debt in that number, nor in the $13,140,301,918,135.70 of Debt Held by the Public.

Who cares, anyway? Well, you might care if you went over to the Federal Reserve Board’s site and found that agency debt is tucked away in its Financial Accounts of the United States report in Table L.211 and found that that agency debt at the end of 2014 was about $6,920,000,000,000.

What is agency debt anyway? The Federal Reserve provides helpful footnote to Table L.211:

Agency- and GSE-backed securities include: issues of federal budget agencies (line 2) such as those for TVA; issues of government sponsored enterprises (line 3) such as Fannie Mae and FHLB; and agency- and GSE-backed mortgage pool securities issued by GNMA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Farmers Home Administration (line 4). Only the budget agency issues are considered officially to be part of the total debt of the federal government, which is shown in table L.106, line 20.

In other words, agency debt is the debt issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac & Co. It is the helium gas cylinder that inflated the Great Real Estate Bubble.

Agency debt is now tucked away right in plain sight, and has its own Agency Debt page at usgovernmentdebt.us, a wholly-owned subsidiary of usgovernmentspending.com. Here is a chart of Agency Debt from 1945 to the present.

Let’s chart the agency debt right on top of the Debt to the Penny national debt. A picture is worth a thousand words, and then you will be able to see the agency debt scaled right alongside the national debt.

BLUE: regular national debt

RED: agency debt, in percent of GDP.

MEANING: Today the total federal debt, including both the U.S. Treasury and agency debt, is higher than at the end of World War II when we plunged the nation into debt to win the war against Hitler and Tojo.

Thar’s too much debt going on out thare. The bloated government that the libs dream of is here and it’s bankrupting the country.

Only one fix, freeze total government spending. The net effect will be to eliminate many areas that government should not be inviolved with.

“Why are so many headlines from right wing publications mimicking idiotic clickbait ads? Are we really this devolved?”

There is one weird trick to losing belly fat by not eating these 3 foods! I wonder if that anything to do with it?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.