Thanks to Daily State News for publishing my "Chill-out" letter where I explained that the debt crisis mountain is really a molehill.
Leaks coming out in recent days, from a location in Florida, indicate that a person who thinks he is a genius, and another person who everyone else thinks is a genius, seem to be having a lot of trouble fixing our debt problem that really is mostly not a problem.
As an afterthought, I present here some solid and numerical proof for what I said in my letter (that if public debt is a problem, then so is private debt). It took ten minutes of my time and I typed into the search bar of my web browser the following four questions (each one of the questions activated Google's generative artificial intelligence and gave me an "export" button to save the pages of results and references). I edited and condensed the answers.
Total US government debt = $36 trillion. Total interest paid on government debt=$882 billion (about 2.5% interest). Total US private debt (corporation + household)=$12 trillion + $18 trillion=$30 trillion. Interest rates: corporation bonds=5.4%; household credit card=24%; home loan=12%. I will assume 14%, to get private sector, corp and household, interest paid = $648 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively. So, who is overspending?
Just do an internet search on government debt, by country, as a percent of GDP. Historically, the scuttlebutt in economic and banking circles is that the US dollar is the most stable and desireable currency to use in trade (some 75% of all global business transactions pass through US banks). It was never less than best. And, in my retirement, I read almost two dozen books on economics, banking, and international financing. I learned a lot.
Arthur E. Sowers
Harbeson
