Gene Splice asked:


I know, but I would like to see some answers from people who say Clinton gave us a budget surplus and neglect the fact that he added 1.6 trillion to the national debt.

Lag Indicator asked:


I won’t be able to look at the answers until I’m home from work, but I look forward to seeing how YA users think we could reduce the national debt. It’s well over $12 trillion and still climbing rapidly. It’s not a problem that will go away if we just ignore it, and the interest on that debt is very substantial. The issue of the national debt must be addressed, the sooner the better.

DL It’s Me! asked:


Some economists say we’d be in debt of TRILLIONS of dollars.
Lol, sorry, I didn’t know we were in debt of trillions of dollars already. My teacher said it like Obama and McCain would kill our country if they came into office. I’m guessing I heard it wrong and he meant to say trillions more?
Wait, yes I’m correct, judging from Michael’s answer, it would be somewhat correct to say we’d be TRILLIONS of dollars in debt.

My teacher said 30 trillion dollars for Obama and 50 trillion dollars for McCain. 7 trillion is way less than 30 trillion isn’t it?

vote_usa_first asked:


My guess is $2.4 trillion more in debt. How much do you think?

Justin asked:


I am curious as to what final leg(s) we are left standing on? Obviously our economy can be roughly translated as “debt”. As our ability to borrow dwindles, so goes our economy.

Obviously our economy was way overheated in the late 90′s. So now we are contracting; I saw an article comparing Japan of the late 80′s to our economy at its peak, and thought it’s not coincidental that roughly the same thing is happening in the US.

Of course our total outstanding national debt sits around $54-55 trillion(!) range.

How can we possibly function in this capacity?

Hazey asked:


I understand that the current national debt is 9.4 trillion not including the interest owed. What is the amount of the total debt with the interest?

nimhelm asked:


I heard that national debt is around $9 trillion and that bugdet defecit is around in the billions. So what is what?

sam_24 asked:


The U.S. government is in debt over $65 trillion dollars! I don’t feel like the people in DC really care as much about it as they should; they feel okay about leaving it to the next generation. If the government could get out of debt think of how much extra money they would have for other things such as education, health care, any many other things that would benefit the people. It may be a pain to get out of debt right now but the sooner we can get out of debt the more money we’ll have in the future.

PrimeConcern asked:


Given all the worries about credit in this country, and subprime mortgages, I was curious as to what the entire amount of home mortgage debt is. There are about 110 million households in the country, with 70% of them owned residences. Let’s say there are 75 million owned homes. Not all have mortgages, but if 70 million do, and the average mortgage amount on such homes is $200,000, that comes out to a scary $14 TRILLION of mortgage debt in the USA. If just 2% default, the amount of bad home loans is $280 billion. It could obviously be much higher.

Does anyone know what total mortgage debt is per household and in total? This is a real problem that could damage the economy.

Ryan B asked:


I was wondering what the best way to increase my debt would be. I want to set the record for the single person with the most debt. I want this debt to be in the trillion-dollar range. Any suggestions? I don’t want to get arrested until I achieve this record.