debt
individuals can be in debt a long way before the bank will stop giving them money. it's something like 4x their income. in other words, you can buy a $400k house on a $100k income. which is kinda cool. so the government has a debt of $14t. and an income of $2t. some 7x higher. sounds out of bounds. so we should panic? well, no. you and i would pay some 4% interest on a home mortgage. the government pays some 0.2%. no that's not a typo. so the us government could afford debt some 20x higher than we could. which works out to some $160t. or more than 10x the current debt. so we shouldn't panic? well, maybe. the government doesn't count debt the same way you and i and exxon have to. if the government did, it's "real" debt would be in the $50t to $100t range. depending on who's doing the counting. so we should panic? no. but we should tread really lightly. cause if the treasury bill rate goes up, we could be seriously over extended and in real danger of collapse. kinda like the soviet union. assuming of course the bean counters from the federal reserve who produced the above numbers aren't just making like chicken little. but there's no real reason for t-bill rates to go up. nope. nope. nope. washington would have to do something incredibly stupid. like talk about defaulting on our debt. and even the tea-brain partiers aren't that stupid. are they? oh wait.