U.S. Borrowing Now 100 Percent of GDP

Elisabeth Meinecke - U.S. Borrowing Now 100 Percent of GDP

There was a lot of rhetoric over the weekend about the full faith and credit of the United States. So Congress voted, and Obama signed a deal, to raise the debt ceiling.

And then this happened (from Yahoo! News):

US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government's debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country's spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.

The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.

I pride myself on not being an economist, but debt reaching 100 percent of gross domestic product sounds about as appealing as being in the third remake of Planet of the Apes. All those people who talked about the full faith and credit of the United States over the weekend should take a long look at what their irresponsible spending has brought the country to.