Since the federal government, with the consent of both parties, just lit another 1.7 trillion dollars of imaginary money on fire, the generally quiet period between Christmas and the new year might be an opportune time to consider an important matter that has been almost completely ignored by both elected officials and the media. That would be the national debt. In case you hadn’t noticed, America’s debt has now reached a staggering level of 31.3 trillion dollars. That’s a figure so huge that it’s almost impossible to wrap your brain around it. In the Boston Globe this week, business and finance reporter Jim Puzzanghera has raised an important red flag, warning that this level of debt represents a “rapidly growing death spiral” for our nation. As he correctly points out, the gargantuan debt number obscures a more pressing crisis for the country. The federal government has to pay interest on that debt every year and as you may have heard, the Fed has been steadily raising interest rates ever since the Biden recession began. We had to pay nearly $400 billion in interest in 2022 and that figure is currently projected to climb to nearly $1.2 trillion over the next decade.Read More
The national debt is a “rapidly growing death spiral”
