Update February 20, 2019: The manipulation up of the stock market never ceases except for a few blips every 1 to 2 years now. The haters of humanity are in full control now. It's no longer about corporate profits but the means to extract as much wealth from the middle class as possible. The government is using the PEOPLE'S MONEY via the US Treasury Department, of course in borrowing from the Federal Reserve, to manipulate up the market. It's the plunge protection team in overdrive. Debts at record high everywhere, federal debt, states debt, personal debt and student debt now a biggie, corporate debt. The real GDP growth per proper accounting remains deeply negative, 11 years running! Some of the figures below will now be off being it's many years since I first wrote this, however, the United States continues going down the toilet. All the money borrowed is not doing the middle class any good - it's widening the wealth divide thereby hurting the middle class. A lot of the figures shown below are now pumped up but I assure you, with all the debt being piled up, and now with a record wealth divide, record homeless, it should be obvious to all now that the government propaganda cannot take away all we see. The homeless camps are growing all across the country, far worse than back in 2012. Strange, the propaganda of a booming economy by Trump keeps going. I wonder just how many people are being fooled. Those numbers must be dwindling.
Update September 12, 2012: The Federal Reserve decides tomorrow if it will continue to steal from the American public more money so those who sold their souls can be at the feeding trough of the Central Bankers. The national debt is still climbing and there is no end in sight. I will update a few of the pertinent data points below.
Update Feb 24, 2012: Since the end of 2010 when I first wrote this, our country has gotten into deeper debt, our employment problems are worsening despite the Labor Department trying to spin the numbers without accounting for the population growth rate that requires 150K new jobs per month before there is any real net gain in employment, plus they keep eliminating people from the workforce, with a record 1.2 million excluded for the month of January 2012 alone! Some numbers below will be amended effective this current date.
The federal debt plus state and local debt of the United States as of September 12, 2012 exceeds that of the GDP. Today it's roughly 150% of the GDP! Respectively, the debts are $16.0T, $5T (estimated, see noted below), and $1.73T. The GDP is $15.3T. The national debt is currently climbing about 2X faster than the GDP – a very worrisome sign for now and our future!
Combined, Federal, State, and local debt is $72K per person!
The official federal unfunded liabilities as of September 12, 2012 stands at $121 Trillion, an ever increasing and very staggering amount equivalent to about 8 times our GDP! This is $385K per person!
Not only is there a federal unfunded liability, but there are unfunded liabilities for state and local governments as well. You can blame spoiled government employees for this, notably those at the top who are paid $200K per year who are behind the mismanagement of pension funds (actuaries who are failures yet are still allowed to keep their high-paying jobs) along with all the high level employees throughout government who dictate the high wages and benefits allowed. There is the general unaccounted benefit of sick time, holiday pay, and vacation pay that far exceeds that of most privately employed persons and which adds to the corruption of government that is against the people, NOT by the people, for the people and of the people. It has separated itself incrementally over the past 30 years to be an entity that is above the people and selfishly looking out for their best interest first. Certainly there are entitlement programs that are made to string along people in making it appear as though the government gives back something, but it keeps taking at an alarming rate and determines on its own how much additional debt the people will be held accountable for. It is all too well known that the compensation of government employees have skyrocketed over the past 30 years. Because of the great benefits offered to government workers, they use to get paid about 10% under those of the private workforce but now it ranges around 30-60% higher, 35% for state and local to about 60% higher for federal jobs. When accounting for the very generous benefits, the total compensation then becomes 45% to 100% higher, 45% for state and local and 100% for federal jobs. Because state and local employees comprise 80% of government jobs, this works out to an average of 55% higher compensation compared to that of the private sector.
Now, there are additional happenings going on right now that are a direct working of government and the Federal Reserve to siphon even more money from the American people to then give to Banks, and the wealthiest persons through unlawful manipulation of the stock market through extraordinary bond purchasing programs, known as POMO (permanent open market operations). The Federal reserve in just 2 years' time transferred America's money to the wealthy, comprising of $3 TRILLION! Because our country is in debt and that we do not even have this money to give away, the common person will be stuck with the bill of paying all the subsidies to the rich back, along with interest. In addition there is currently about $100 billion on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve of stock holdings, which is likely the result of the unfair PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM unit of the Federal Reserve preventing stocks from falling. It is bizarre that there is not an equal bubble-protection team but they do not seem to care about a fair market place. Your tax dollars are being used to fund this as well. If you ever wondered why the separation between the rich and poor is at an all-time record, this will help your understanding. Ben Bernanke of the foreign-interest "Federal" Reserve Bank makes $200K per year while inflicting harm on our country and he still isn't impeached. I made my efforts and wrote the Federal Reserve dozens of times but of course they are unresponsive. I urge people publicly to contact their representatives to urge them to impeach Bernanke but evidently I am unable to reach enough people an/or people are not as concerned as they should be about this.
The official unfunded liabilities for just the States of California and New York were claimed to be tied at $68 billion in 2008. However, in 2010, the study by Stanford University showed that the actual unfunded liability for California was about $500 billion, nearly 8 times the official number. See: LA Times Story on Stanford Study of California Unfunded Liabilities. Noting this story in the Free Republic on the study by Manhattan Institute's Empire Center of the unfunded liabilities for New York, it came up with the figure of $205 billion. See New York State Unfunded Liabilities. Being that New York and California were on par with unfunded liability debt levels, this study may be underestimating the figure since it would be expected to climb in not so dissimilar fashion with that of California.
In July 2010, the National Center for Policy Analysis showed that the total State and Local unfunded liabilities was about $3.1 trillion or about 3 times that of the official figures. See NCPA Assessment of State and Local Unfunded Liabilities. In December 2010, it was reported that the figure leaped to $3.5 trillion. It would appear as though government is trying to put out lower numbers to not scare the public and to prevent getting slapped with lower debt ratings by the major debt rating agencies.
As far as corporate America goes, the media has been doing their share of propaganda to align itself with Ben Bernanke's unlawful policies of pumping the stock market. It's not surprising since General Electric owns major broadcasters. I sent in many requests to MSNBC and to Bloomberg to report the real data but they prefer to give their one-sided view through rose-colored glasses. We have the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) caving into banks to allow them to hold an undisclosed amount of debt, estimated to be in excess of $5 Trillion, without reporting on their financial statements, thus giving a false impression of the true health of banks. So, many of you have heard that corporate America is "sitting on a pile of cash". Is this so? Since much information is not readily available, I contacted Standard and Poor's back in 2005 and also just days ago. In 2005 the debt of the top 500 corporations in the United States stood at $3.6 Trillion. This was near the top of the bubble markets, the markets that Ben Bernanke allowed to happen so he could consolidate the banks and thrust his policies onto this country so that the divide between the rich and poor would become even wider. Well, I just told you what the debt was 5 years ago for the S&P500, and as of December 2, 2010, they provided me with the current figure of $7.25 Trillion! So, I guess with the stock market up 100% from early 2009 until right this moment, with the unemployment rate stuck at 10%, home foreclosures at a record high, government debt doubled, and corporate debt also doubled? Seems hard to believe, but it's true. You have Ben Bernanke to thank, because the polices he forced on the people are meant only to help pump the stock market, with the ultra rich being the greatest benefactor of his corrupt monetary programs. If you'd like more information to back this up, there is a story that speaks of the debt of all non-financial US companies, different than the S&P500 but still includes it as a major portion, see: The Biggest Lie About US Companies.
Now, there is not just the debt of government but personal debt as well. This is also very alarming. To be fair, there will always be personal debt, primarily because of mortgages and from credit cards, however, for a stable economy the personal debt per household asset ratio should be low and I would recommend this ratio to be under 0.15. To put this in proper perspective, I will present here the average household assets and personal debt to generate a ratio for the year 2000, and do similarly for 2010 when this was first written as well as for the updates on Feb and Sep 2012:
| Year | Personal Debt | Household Assets | Debt/Asset Ratio |
| 2000 | $29.2K | $148K | 0.20 |
| 2010 | $52.3K | $175K | 0.30 |
| Feb 2012 | $51.1K | $170K | 0.30 |
| Sep 2012 | $50.1K | $217K | 0.23 |
Personal debt is $50K per person!
Thus from the above table you can see that household assets increased from 2000 but at not so fast of pace as the personal debt. As a percentage of assets, the debt increased 50%! From 2010 to early 2012, the debt/asset ratio remained the same, thus no improvement. However, a remarkable change took place in just a few months after February 2012 as the update on September 2012 shows a dramatically different picture. Knowing that the economy did NOT improve one iota in this small time span as evidence of the sour official 1.5 %GDP growth (see: Negative 10% GDP Growth Unmasked) and monthly job growth not even keeping pace with the population growth rate, this new data point is awfully strange. I suspect that government may be fabricating an extreme increase in house values but when they have been relatively flat, still holding up at way too high of prices relative to income because banks are manipulating the supply of foreclosed houses on the market, there is no way possible that the total house values went up more than 25%! I believe it may have to do with government greatly fudging numbers prior to the presidential election. Only a small amount could be explained by the Federal Reserve stealing about $15K from everyone and handing it over to the ultra rich in an indirect fashion to unlawfully pump up the stock market. It will interesting to see how this debt per asset ratio changes by early 2013. In the meantime, I sent an email to the administration of the usdebtclock.org site seeking verification.
The savings rate in America must still increase to get this country back into sustainable economic metrics, however, the Federal Reserve under direction of Ben Bernanke is pushing people to do just the opposite. I have written the Federal Reserve scores of times but in order to make change happen, people need to keep pushing those in governing roles to do what makes sense. It's a travesty when those in power are being paid 5 times that of the median wage and still they can't perform well.
Starting March 1, 2012 I will be noting the amount in savings per person in this country. According to USdebtclock.org, it appears to be falling at the alarming rate of $500 per year!
As of:
Year 2000 data: $1,465
March 1, 2012: $1,170
April 1, 2012: $1,125.
Sep 12, 2012, $1,265
I am having a hard time locating the savings by year but I do faintly recall it being about $3K 35 years ago which after adjusting for inflation would make the present amount saved about 80% lower! (If anyone can provide a link for this information I will incorporate the data). The data put out by usdebtclock.org site is providing some nonsensical data on the savings per person. It fluctuates too great to be reliable. I surely hope other figures are accurate. I noticed in one day the savings jumped up about 10-20% which make completely no sense at all (I didn’t save a record of the figures but I will keep a closer eye on it).
As far as mortgage debt goes, it was 69% of our GDP in 2000 but has since soared to 95% of our GDP by year 2010! In February 2012, mortgage debt to GDP stands at 89%, presumably from many people walking away from homes and boondoggle restructuring plans to bail out irresponsible people who should have known homes were too expensive (see my discussion at: Home Price Evaluator and Discussion). As of September 2012, the mortgage debt to GDP stands at 86% as we are still experiencing people walking away from mortgages.
Summing up the government debt from local to federal, federal unfunded liabilities, and personal debt, it stands at around $510K* per person! *: rounded to two digits.
Noting how little Americans save and with the Ben Bernanke-induced, wealth-dividing inflation, how do you think we could ever come up with paying down a debt of $500K per person? We'd have to sell our country out to the wealthy elite bankers behind the shady institution called the "Federal" Reserve or something similar as this debt has gotten beyond manageability. We could face the debt head on and I propose many solutions in my site noted below but while politicians remain ignorant, this once great nation is headed for enormous disaster.
For solutions to many of the problems United States is facing see: Proposed Solutions
A useful site for some of the important monetary figures of the United States: US Debt Clock
