Floods lowering .. debt rising ... Dollar sinking ... Dubya ... ????
The US National Debt is now nearly £8 Trillion
US TREASURY SECURITIES OUTSTANDING, AUGUST 31, 2005 (Millions of dollars)
Public 4,614,279
Intra Gvt 3,312,654
TOTAL 7,926,933
Statutory Debt Limit Total = $8,184,000 Balance of Statutory Debt Limit $ 315,605
National Debt increase is $596 Billion for fiscal '04… a record .. so far.
So after taking out £60Bn for Katrina (Iraq war - Congress appropriations to end Fiscal 2005 =$200Bn) , Dubya has $315Bn - £60Bn = $ 255Bn "walking about money" in the Treasury cookie jar, which at an annual burn rate of ...say $ 600 Bn is at most 5 months increased expenditure (up to Feb 2006 latest) so he needs to go to Congress before then to lift the ceiling on the Statutory Debt Limit. Nota Bene : Contracting cronyism defines this administration. FEMA are being given $60 billion to one of its most cronyfied outposts.
Remember gadfly Rep Waxman (Dubya's nemesis ?) wrote to Appropriations Committee Chair Lewis on Sept 8th. about a provision in the Katrina Emergency Supplemental Appropriations that would extend from $15,000 to $250,000 the purchasing limit for an individual transaction for federal employees with government-issued credit cards. (There are about 500,000 of these credit cards in use in the federal government !!!!)
With the mid-term Congressional Elections looming Dubya is going to have to do some fancy financial juggling - you can bet he's going to get splinters in his fingers scraping the bottom of the pork barrel to keep/win some friends.
Dubya is also going to have to keep an eye on those Bond Auctions to make sure the Central Banks fall in line in taking up the slack for Uncle Sam... and the almighty dollar is getting that sinking feeling .. especially against Far Eastern currencies and the Euro. (Which is why the yield on 30yr bonds has started to rise)
Deficits elsewhere are soaring, in the Tri-State area alone, New York State owes $4.2 billion; New Jersey, $4 billion; Connecticut, $1.3 billion.
A Billion here a Billion there and soon .... you are talking serious money.The late Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Il (Attrib)
Mathematical note: The word "billion" comes from the french (bi- million) where it stood for a"million-million". In the United States it was "mis-translated" and has ended up representing a "thousand million".To give an idea what a billion is; at 10.40 a.m. on April 20, 1902, (ish) exactly a billion minutes had elapsed since the (alleged) birth of Christ. In the US a Trillion is (confusingly) one million million = 1 followed by 12 zeroes = one thousand billion. In the UK a Trillion = one billion billion = 1 followed by 18 zeroes and is (more correctly) known as a Quintillion.
2 comments:
Very interesting article. I learned something. Didn't know that our "billion" is a misnomer. And thus also "trillion". It is nice to know we have 375,000 dollars left on our national Mastercard, though. That's terribly reassuring. That should be gone in about 5 minutes.
Please note the Treasury figures are in Millions of Dollars, so you have $375 Bn (give or take some loose change I guess) which should see you through the weekend - especially if you have a Kroger Discount card and clip a few coupons.
Please note that HM Treasury now use "Billion" in the US sense,(i.e 1,000 X 1 Million) so when Tony B is using "Billion" he has bastardized what the scientific community have been using for many decades.
Post a Comment