THE EXPLODING DEBT

Now here’s a problem.  The National Debt Clock billboard is getting ready to explode. 

From Agence France-Presse:

US debt clock running out of time, space

Mon Mar 27, 9:23 PM ET

Tick, 20,000 dollars, tock, another 20,000 dollars.

So rapid is the rise of the US national debt, that the last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving total near New York’s Times Square move in seemingly random increments as they struggle to keep pace.

The national debt clock, as it is known, is a big clock. A spot-check last week showed a readout of 8.3 trillion – or more precisely 8,310,200,545,702 – dollars … and counting.

But it’s not big enough.

Sometime in the next two years, the total amount of US government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence. . . .

Since 1776, we have accumulated a Nation Debt of $8.3 trillion, which will be $10 trillion or so by the time the White House changes hands.  Roughly EIGHT trillion of that TEN trillion will have been racked up by just 3 of our 43 presidents: Reagan, Bush and Bush.

Even at today’s $8.3 trillion, let alone the $10 trillion we’ll shortly reach, and even at today’s relatively low interest rates – the annual interest on the debt, alone, is already is equivalent to 40% of all the personal income taxes we pay each year.

The Republican leadership – which called for a Balanced Budget Amendment back when the Clinton Administration actually was achieving one (for a while, that Debt Clock billboard needed to run backward) – now calls only for an Anti-Marriage Amendment, to discourage stable, responsible same-sex relationships and penalize the children of same-sex parents.

This is done in the name of the Lord.  But a new web site questions that interpretation.

FAITH IN AMERICA

Here’s the site.  And here’s one of the quotes I found telling:

[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.

—Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.

What do you think of these ads?   I like this one best.  And this one.

Tomorrow:  Back to Annuities