While the world's attention has been focused on the presidential election upheaval and the Middle East wars, another story that has received little media attention in recent months made another major breakthrough on Monday. Yesterday, the official national debt surpassed $35 trillion for the first time, and that's pretty much on schedule. At the current pace, the national debt is growing by $1 trillion every 90 days, and is expected to exceed $56 trillion in 10 years. Just three months ago, the debt reached $34 trillion, and three months before that, it reached $33 trillion, both of which are uncharted territory on the road to national bankruptcy.
While inflation remains a constant factor, the more worrying trend is the rising debt-to-GDP ratio. Conservative CBO estimates project the debt-to-GDP ratio to be 99% today and exceed 120% in the early 2030s. However, the debt-to-GDP ratio is almost certainly much higher, and according to other agencies that track public and private financial data, it is already above 120% and rising rapidly. For example, the Federal Reserve's own data puts the debt-to-GDP ratio at 122% in the first quarter of 2024.
As the election campaign gets underway, neither the major party presidential candidates nor the lesser candidates have said much about the debt. Many Americans seem distracted by other issues. But if the nation's finances continue to deteriorate, the dollar itself will collapse and Americans will experience a currency collapse and debt crisis similar to that experienced by the Weimar Republic a century ago.
