by Aetius Romulous

Created on: January 31, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2011

America is in debt because it wants to be. Unlike any other country in the world, America has believed for a generation that its Debt was the fountainhead of its power, the source of its wealth and excess. America has deliberately and with full intent run deficits and financed them through debt, a veritable ATM of cash with which it buys its Economic Hegemony, and makes payments on its future. It's hard to solve a problem that isn't one, to the blind that will not see.

The Nations books are kept on an annual basis, and once a year buildings full of civil servants add it all up, and produce all the totals. If the Government is short - spent more than it took in - a "Deficit" occurs. If the government takes in more than it spends, then it is called a "Surplus". It takes a lot of spending to become the United States of America, and not all of it is bad. World War II is rightfully remembered as the most pitiful folly mankind has ever bumbled into, but what is not so well known is the staggering bill in dollars that "event" charged up. In the US, war production and maimed international markets produced a witches brew of deficits, every one of which was absolutely necessary at the time. Accepting, of course, that one finds war necessary. The real issue, then, becomes what to do with that massive shortfall once the bill arrives?

In the US, the decision has always been made to borrow the shortage, and pay it back whenever. Deficits not paid turn into Debts owed at the stroke of midnight, every October 1. The Debt sits on the books until next year, when the same civil servants in the same buildings total all the same columns and learn to their utter surprise - again - that the government spent more than it took in. Another Deficit, stroke of midnight, added to the Debt from last year, Civil Servants, Buildings, Total,...and do it all over again. Good work if you can get it.

On January 1, 1791, the first full year of accounting for the newly minted United States of America, the National Public Debt (that's what the wonks call it) stood at a whopping $75,463,476.52 (In those days, I would guess 52 cents meant something). That was the shortfall from the Revolutionary War, and sundry costs to set up shop on a new continent. This is what the Founders spent beyond what they had, and I suppose as the first actual shortfall on the first day of business, it was both Debt and Deficit, right as the clock chimed midnight, for the very first time. Those were nothing if not quaint

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