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Showing posts from December, 2010

Our Math Problem

Image via Wikipedia Our leaders, our political pundits (sadly including many of our conservative talk show hosts) and most especially members of Congress seem to have difficulty with math - and we have a major math problem. While the focus is on the deficit - and that certainly is important - what really matters is the total debt. Let's look at the important numbers. The Federal Reserve yesterday released U.S. Household Net Worth. The sum of all the assets of all the household in the U.S., less the credit card, mortgage, auto loan, etc. debt is about $55.9 trillion. Since stocks and bonds are ultimately owned by individuals, that represents all the companies, certificates of deposits, houses, land, gold, jewelry, timber, automobiles, guns, baseball card collections, art, oil wells, farms, ranches, camp grounds, office towers, apartment buildings, malls, pensions, boats and motorcycles in the country. On the other hand, the accumulated U. S. debt is $13,800,000,000,000. That is