The Federal Debt clock stands at 20.608 trillion dollars at the time of the writing of this article. A trillion is a million million.  One million days is the same as 2739 years or 24 million hours. a "person" would have to spend a million dollars a day, every day, for 2,352 years to spend 20.608 trillion dollars.  That is the background for this article.


Three years ago this column, more specifically its sister site "Reclaiming Common Sense" published an article "Federal Debt - Mortgaging Our Future - $117 Billion Monthly Mortgage Payment." A million dollars is tough enough to comprehend. A million million is seriously beyond Powerball territory. The first "mortgaging our future" article equated a $18 trillion debt to a $180,000 mortgage at 5% interest rate. If we had a 180,000 mortgage it would cost us $117 billion dollars a month, every month, for 360 months to repay the $18,000,000,000,000. The total interest paid on the debt would have been $16.2 trillion dollars for a total of over 34 billion dollars. The follow-up article "Inaction on the Federal Debt has cost us 2.5 since November 2014" was written during January of 2016 when the Federal Debt Clock stood at $18.881 trillion dollars. We had not paid down any of the debt. We added over $1 trillion to the National debt between the end of November 2014 and January of 2016. A Mortgage of 188,100 on a  would generate a monthly payment of $1014 a monthly with $365,253 total mortgage and 176,253 in interest. In other words, it would cost us 36.5 trillion dollars to repay a  $18.881 trillion dollar debt


The "Irresponsible and Unpatriotic" debt.  President George W. Bush added roughly $5 trillion dollars to the Federal Debt. This was dwarfed by the roughly $10 trillion added to the debt by President Obama. Remember that the TARP money that was added to the debt under President Bush was repaid, mostly with interest, under President Obama. The net debt for President Bush was under $5 trillion while the net debt added under President Obama was over $10 trillion. The good news is that some of President Obama's Quantitative Easing Debt will be repaid through Quantitative Tightening. Unfortunately the Debt has increased to over $20.6 trillion. Not only has the debt not been brought down since November 2014 - it has expanded by $2.648 trillion dollars over 1129 days. That is 2.34 billion dollars a day.


The good news is that the interest rates have come down since the last column was written. The amount that is owed is roughly as if we place 20% down on a 260.000 home. If the mortgage was $208,000 then the 3.71% interest rate would yield a payment of just $959 a month. The total mortgage cost would "only" be 34.5 trillion dollars. Inaction has "saved us" two trillion dollars since January 2016. The bad news is that it has still cost us half a trillion dollars since November 2014.


The bad news is that interest rates are rising. If we apply the 5% interest rate used during November 2014 and January 2016 the total cost exceeds 40.19 trillion dollars.  The mortgage payment is 111.7 billion dollars a month. That doesn't include taxes, as the original column included them. That State and Local Tax deduction (SALT) is going to add up quickly. That roughly $180,000 mortgage at 5% would have given us a monthly payment for principal and interest of $966.28 or 96.7 billion dollars a month on a 20 trillion dollar home. Inaction has cost us over $6,000,000,000,000. The Federal Debt is not a "fixed rate mortgage." interest rates will rise more than it has risen since November 2016. The interest on the debt will rise more than it already has risen.


Yesterday's article "Federal Debt: Debt Interest Exploding" detailed how almost all of this year's deficit, $503 billion dollars of $534 billion dollars, will be interest on the debt. We must stop adding to the debt. Contact your Representative. Contact your Senators. Tweet this out. Place it on Facebook. It's Your Money. The debt grew by $38,000,000 since the writing on this article began. That is almost $20 million dollars an hour.


It's the economy.


PS. Your share, if you are working, is $170,436.

 Reclaiming Common Sense