Economic Suicide

[zengrifter]

Economic Suicide

By: James Turk
The Freemarket Gold & Money Report

Anybody who has been lending money to the US federal government by buying T-Bills and its other debt instruments received a brutal one-two punch last week. It was hopefully a sobering experience, causing them to question why they would want to hold any US government paper.

The Washington Post landed the first punch with the following report on March 6th. “WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress on Monday that the administration has now taken “all prudent and legal actions,” including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit…Treasury officials, briefing congressional aides last week, said that the government will run out of maneuvering room to keep from exceeding the current limit sometime during the week of March 20.”

The second punch was delivered a couple of days later by this Dow Jones Newswires dispatch: “WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) -- The U.S. government ran a monthly budget deficit of $119.20 billion in February, an all-time monthly record that was still slightly less than forecast, according to a Treasury report Friday. The February federal government deficit was 5% greater than a year earlier, according to the Treasury Department's monthly budget statement.”

These two reports make clear the dire financial straits the federal government is facing, but its financial position is even worse than it appears. The $8.2 trillion debt limit -- that has proven inadequate to meet the federal government’s borrowing needs -- covers only its direct liabilities. In other words, this $8.2 trillion is the total amount of dollars owed to all the holders of US government debt instruments. Excluded from this total debt are all of the federal government’s other liabilities, which total another $38 trillion. In “The 2005 Financial Report of the United States Government”, US Comptroller General David Walker reported that “the federal government’s fiscal exposures now total more than $46 trillion, up from $20 trillion in 2000.”

Yes, it’s insane. But it’s even more insane that people buy the US government’s T-Bonds and T-Bills thinking that they are a safe, low-risk investment. Maybe they used to be that, but things change. US government debt instruments are no longer a safe place to park your dollars. To substantiate this assertion, here are some shocking facts to mull over.

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