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At least someone in America isn't feeling a credit squeeze: Uncle Sam. This week Congress will vote to raise the national debt ceiling by nearly $2 trillion, to a total of $14 trillion. In this economy, everyone de-leverages except government.

The national debt is currently 13.7 trillion dollars (you can round up to 14 if you ignore that piddling little GDP of Denmark). The American people could work together, movie-montage style, collecting every single physical dollar and cent in existence and they'd still have to go to Vegas*, hit the roulette tables, lay it all on black and win. Four times in a row. That's how you know you're doomed - most people crushed by debt imagine cleaning up at the casino OR having all the money in the world. When you need both, you're buggered.

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

An arcane idea that started on finance blogs in the summer of 2011-- that Tim Geithner should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling -- is now seriously taking off...

President Paul would immediately push for $1 trillion cut in federal spending (per year, not the $3 trillion that Democrats proposed over 10 years with half of that from increased taxes).

President Obama on Wednesday advocated increasing federal tax breaks for automobiles that run on electricity or natural gas, plus spending $1 billion to finance recharging stations for electric vehicles in 15 cities, plus $650 million to make electric cars more appealing to consumers. Maybe he forgot that his own budget projects that the federal debt (now at $15 trillion) will increase to $25 trillion in the next decade.

"Bad as the deficit was under Mr Bush, it will more than triple this year, from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.845 trillion
[...]
Meanwhile, the long-term fiscal outlook grows ever grimmer. Americans are getting older. The government’s unfunded obligations to give them pensions and health care are equivalent to a debt of $483,000 for every household."

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial crisis, according to newly revealed data released Wednesday.

Insanity abounds! An old suggestion has resurfaced that was originally made during the debt ceiling crisis in 2011. Cullen Roche, writing for the Pragmatic Capitalist, shared a suggestion sent to him by one of his readers, and the unusual idea had made it all the way to the desks of Yale law professors and court economists. Now the suggestion has resurfaced, this time from Brad Plumer, writing for the Washington Post. To solve the economic crisis all they have to do is issue two shiny new platinum coins worth … wait for it … $1 trillion dollars each!