When Ben Bernanke was appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve seven years ago, the national debt was $7,932,709,661,723.50. For those of you not interested in counting digits, that number is nearly a cool $8 trillion, but still a tough sum to wrap your brain around.

After yesterday’s end of the month $70 billion Treasury debt auction settlement, total US debt is now a record $15.692 trillion dollars, nearly double what it was when Benny became the leader of the Inkjets back in 2005.

To make the seemingly unquantifiable somehow quantifiable - total US GDP is $15.6242 trillion, which is 101.5% of GDP. That’s right; the national debt is now GREATER than the Gross Domestic Product. US politicians, including the White House, Treasury, and the Federal Reserve have just crossed the Rubicon: the point of no return.

Unless the US economy heats up like a furnace, which would drive GDP higher than total debt, we have crossed the Rubicon indeed. Speaking of the Rubicon we are reminded of Caesar and how the Roman Empire once ruled the world. England, France and Spain were also global empires that were brought to end by DEBT. To be sure, there was more
to it than debt but it cannot be denied that profligacy was a major factor in all their declines.

If you aren’t depressed enough, read on at Zero Hedge where the eponymous Tyler Durden writes about the implications of this unfathomable debt figure.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/total-us-debt-soars-1015-gdp

Trade well and follow the trend, not the so-called “experts.”

Larry Levin