Back on May 25 2010, just as the Greek fiesta was starting to unravel, we wrote the following: "Total US debt per today's Daily Treasury Statement was $12,989,095 million. Also today, the US Treasury auctioned off $42 billion in 2 Year debt. This means that as of this moment, assuming the new debt were to settle today, the US has $13,031,095 billion in debt: congratulation America - you have now passed lucky $13 trillion in total debt. But don't worry, we won't stay here for long. At the current rate of issuance, $14 trillion will be passed in 8 months, and $15 trillion in another 7. By the end of 2011, we estimate total US sovereign debt to be about $15.5 trillion. For some recent vivid examples of prosperity courtesy of runaway debt issuance, please see Argentina, Japan and Greece." We apologize profusely, as we were off by two months.
And yet we are far closer than Obama's 2010 budget titled "A New Era Of Responsibility", which predicted that full year 2012 debt would be just $200MM higher than where debt is now. Instead, it will be about $1 trillion more. And of course, together with underestimating debt, Obama naturally went ahead and overestimated GDP: an unheard of event.
