If you look at the government of our nation like a big company, a really, really, really big company with an annual budget in excess of two and a half trillion dollars; then understanding some things about it's finances get easier. The government has been getting deeper in debt every day for a long time with few exceptions. The end of Bill Clinton's period as President was one of those exceptions. We were headed toward less Federal Government Debt. We were paying it off due to taxes levied on the gains in wealth by those who owned stocks and made profits during the investment period from 1992 to 1999. Those taxes have disappeared as has some of that wealth in the period since 1999, but our economy is in recovery and things are getting better again, aren't they?

Welllllllll, maybe not quite yet, but they are going to get better just ask the President, your job is just around the corner, along with prosperity and the shrinking debt. No that's not right the debt is no longer shrinking, it is never projected to shrink again in our lifetime. The deficit run by the government each year may get smaller eventually but the National Debt is growing. It is going to keep on growing unless we figure out how to get this company to behave responsibly. Now if I were a shareholder to the US government, which in a manner of speaking we all are; I would be screaming to fire the CEO, his whole administration and his whole board of directors (Congress), without many exceptions. The differences between owning shares in a company and owning a share in our government are substantial. We can still use that paradigm to talk about what is happening because financial responsibility is still about fiscal discipline whether you are running a government or a business or a household.

Seven trillion dollars in debt to people who expect to get their interest payments regularly is a bit bigger than most of us can think about comfortably. So let's break it down to what each of us owes individually right now. The seven trillion breaks down to about $24,000 per person owed right now today without any hope of shrinking that amount any time soon. Now if you are in your childbearing years and you have a new baby, that child, while they are still a fetus will begin to owe their $24,000 bill to the government's creditors too. They will be born into debt.

The amount of the actual obligation that is incurred upon our children's birth can vary a little but it will not go below that basic number in our lifetime and probably not in theirs. Of course that number only speaks to our share of the national debt, not the cost of other government obligations like unfunded Social Security and Medicare and Veteran's benefits. According to the comptroller general of the US, David Walker, $24,000 is a little less than a quarter of the obligation already incurred by our government on behalf of each person in our nation. The total obligation owed by every man woman and child if those obligations are added in would be $100,000. I suspect that even this number is low, but I can work with it for the purposes of this discussion.

No Corporation can do to its shareholders what our government can do to it's taxpayers, Corporations cannot assume debt on behalf of their shareholders. The corporation has its own financial life and debt assumed by it does not descend upon shareholders. No one would buy stock in a corporation if it did. Our CEO, the President, has that unique ability through the process of using his board of directors, Congress, to pass tax laws. Our tax laws are poorly understood by most Senators and Representatives as well as most Federal administrative officials. That may be because of the size of the tax code and its complexity more than anything else. Neither the Administration nor the Congress has any real grasp of what is going on in our nation in regard to debt; or if they do, they are criminally irresponsible in managing the finances of our nation.

One thing is clear; if it is left up to this administration to guide this nation financially any longer our debt will get a whole lot worse. The worst part is it will never get better again; not if this Administration's policies are extended into the future indefinitely, as is proposed in the new budget. There is no foreseeable point in the future at which the government's income will again exceed the level needed to reduce it's debt. Not ever again will this debt get smaller if we follow the policies of reduced taxation and increased spending already made into law by this Administration and its lackeys in Congress.

Debt was a dirty word to most of our ancestors for a very good reason. The cultural memory of songs and stories still included debtor's prisons and other such vile practices of the past. The one hope of the debtor in our scenario is unfortunately inflation which will make the fixed incomes of those retiring on the money accrued over a lifetime even more inadequate. Of course in this case the debtor becomes the recipient of the income against which the debt is pledged eventually. Perhaps we need to look at other solutions than tax funded retirement plans; but private investment accounts are risky. Sweden has developed a blended public private approach to retirement funds starting in 2000 and thus far the private funds are down between thirty and forty percent since their initiation. That is a real problem, but so is our current system which is turning insolvent on my 99th birthday, just in time for my retirement party. God bless and keep you all safe in these times of big debts and bad policies that make them worse.