Frightening, but not all that surprising. (HT: Ryan Griffith)
As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.
I checked with someone I trust on financial and economic matters, and while it’s difficult to know the exact numbers, the basic premise of the article is sound. And in case you missed it: We owe more money than exists in the world. Only the United States government could accomplish such a feat.
When I read the story, it reminded me of Matt Chandler’s talk at the recent Desiring God Conference for Pastors. At one point, he cracked a joke about debt in which he imagined a hypothetical Christian worship leader writing a song that said, “If you have $4 and you spend $7, that’s dumb.”
So what is it if you have a couple trillion, but you spend 65 trillion? Oh, and what if, technically-speaking, the only work you did in order to get it was promising people that you would give them things, and that you did such lofty work as the representatives of the people who will inevitably pay for your insanity?
I love the last line of the story.
“The federal government is bankrupt,” Williams told WND. “In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary.”
For related thoughts on the Government’s game of Grabby-Grabby, see this one by Doug Wilson.
