NYC Letter: Beyond Comprehension

Day 58 of CHOPE

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

Everett Dirksen,
Congressman (R-IL, 16th) and Senator (R-IL),
attributed quote on government profligacy

Perhaps like you, most of our business is transacted in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, occasionally in the tens of thousands. These amounts have a direct relationship to what we can and cannot afford, to our assessing prudent risk, to how we view the future. When we encounter numbers in the hundreds of thousands or millions, we lack an experiential appreciation of their enormity. Billion is beyond our practical comprehension. Trillion is beyond the beyond.

Previously large numbers were the preserve of science, where both the large (e.g., the parsec, 3.086 × 1,013 kilometers, or 1.918 × 1,013 miles) and the small (e.g., the ångström, 0.1 nanometre or 1×10−10 metres) are expressed in big numbers.

Government had dabbled in big numbers for spending and deficits, but recently has become a reckless booster of big numbers, the biggest in all recorded fiscal history. The government took 191 years – from 1791 to 1982 – to run up its first trillion dollar debt. [Pause.] Twenty-seven years later the American national debt crosses the $11 trillion mark.

NATIONAL DEBT HITS RECORD $11 TRILLION

March 17, 2009 (CBS News) - The Federal Government’s flood of red ink hit another high-water mark as the Treasury Department quietly reported today that the National Debt hit $11-trillion for the first time ever. ... Divide it by the U.S. population and it comes up to over $36,000 in debt for every man, woman and child among us.

And the government is running up mountains of debt with increasing speed. It took just over 5½ months for Uncle Sam to go another trillion dollars deeper in debt since hitting $10-trillion last September 30th. It’s the fastest jump in U.S. history.

The hundreds of billions of dollars being spent as part of the federal bailout of the financial markets is a leading factor in the rapid increase. Over $400-billion in debt has been accrued in the 57 days since President Obama took office.

And the federal budget he unveiled last month projects even faster increases in the National Debt. It’ll hit $12.7-trillion by the end of the fiscal year on September 30th. The Administration’s four year estimate shows that by the end of September 2012, the Debt will have soared to $16.2-trillion – which amounts to nearly 100% of the projected Gross Domestic Product that year.

Real [Expletive forborne.] money.

$11,042,553,971,450.47

the U. S. National Debt as of
11:17 AM March 18, 2009

The Cassandras at PGPF instructively moan:

If you consider the government's off-the-balance sheet liabilities and unfunded retirement and health obligations, $11 trillion is just the tip of an iceberg. The real national debt is actually more than $56 trillion -- or $483,000 per U.S. household.*

It is the stunning and unreal enormity of this debt that has removed it from the taxpayer's grasp. A misspent hundred dollars by the city council will sooner stir taxpayer ire than Mr. Obama's misspent incomprehensible trillions.

CHOPE.

Billions. Trillions. Gazillions.

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* Also see here.