What is the United States national deficit?

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/ticker_home.asp

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 01 Jun 2009 at 06:22:49 PM GMT is:
$11,326,268,244,107.12 “The estimated population of the United States is 306,289,227 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $36,979.00.”

According to the treasury, it’s in the 11 trillion range.

This is the national DEBT.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

We won’t know the total 2008–2009 DEFICIT until the books are closed at the end of the fiscal year.

The true defecit will always be unknown except to a small handfull of people

N.b., the question wasn’t “how much is”, but “what is” (goot catch @galileogirl)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

The National Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government; the federal budget deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exceeds revenue. Add up all the deficits (and subtract those few budget surpluses we’ve had) for the past 200+ years and you’ll get the current National Debt.

Way too high.

@bpeoples As an accountant turned econ teacher, if not me, who? <;}

I don’t think that the United States has a deficit. I am really uncertain if that term is any more than a number that names a false category. Every one who buys and sells balances the transaction at the time of the transaction. If you add up trillions of such transactions things still zero out. So there is no such thing as a deficit in an economic sense.
What you do have is political subdivisions in the economy that are artificially measured leaving out the other sides of the transactions that make them balance.
It is those artificial divisions in the economy that are are measured and called deficits. All such numbers do is confuse us.
A national deficit is a purely political thing. Notice the name. It says “NATIONAL”.
There is only one economy. It is the Terran economy.

@walterallenhaxton you keep using this word, I don’t think that it means what you think it means.

@walterallenhaxton You could just as well say there is no such thing as a Terran ecomony, since we are all in the same Planetary system that we call Solar System. It is pretty close to nonsense to claim that the financial systems of the various political divisions of Terra, or Earth, do not exist.

but on the plus side, as a percentage of gdp/gnp, we’re only the 10 highest. england being the first.

@YARNLADY OK. I will simply name it the human economic ecosystem. There is only one of those. I trade around the world and you do to. We trade to different businesses in all sorts of places. As far as I know I do not trade with governments. I trade with individual traders. The political lines on maps can not be seen from space. The wind crosses them all. All natural phenomena do not recognize them and nether does economics.

@bpeoples I am clueless too.

@walterallenhaxton I think you are trying to say that when we borrow from each other, it affects everybody, and the word we call deficit only denotes a factor in the entire world wide system. That does not mean the same thing as it does not exist. I owe my Uncle money, and my son owes me money, so you could just as well say my son actually owes my Uncle, but it wouldn’t make any sense to us, would it?

@YARNLADY No. Your transaction with each individual is separate and should not effect anyone else. It does not effect everybody and it should not. That is what is wrong with what is happening. The state is forcing it to effect everybody when it should not even come to their attention.
Are you forgetting that large investment bank that did go broke? I can’t even remember it’s name. It went broke and they let it. Nothing happened to effect anyone not involved.

Are we talking about feelings? I had not considered that. It was sad for me when Circuit City went away. Some if the outlet stores I was indifferent to. The one that associated fat people with pigs made me happy.

1af·fect Listen to the pronunciation of 1affect
Pronunciation:
\ˈa-ˌfekt\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin affectus, from afficere
Date:
14th century

1obsolete : feeling, affection2: the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes ; also : a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion <patients…showed perfectly normal reactions and affects — Oliver Sacks>

@YARNLADY I made a mistake. The Name was Big Dogs and I thought that disrespectful.

@walterallenhaxton No, I am not talking about feelings. I have used a simplistic example to show how National Debts and National deficits can exist. For my example, read “Uncle Sam” (The US) and “Japanese investors” (for my son). This is a very simple way to portray the economic systems that exist.

To understand the complex, make it as simple and personal as you can. There is very little difference between what my son owes me and what a National Government owes the investor.

@YARNLADY There is no difference at all. Macro economics is a myth. I don’t have much use for the word affect. Even reading the definition I still don’t.

As always, you are free to believe what you want, and it will not change the effects or the facts at all.

@YARNLADY Exactly what I have been saying.