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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.

The Peoples Bank of China has announced that it will no longer fix its currency in terms of the dollar. Instead it will manage the yuan against a basket of currencies.

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 debate in Washington, D.C. over the federal debt continues as the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the “debt ceiling” approaches. Standard & Poor's has already reported that it would cut the U.S. credit rating from AAA to D, the last rung on its scale.

A visualization of US debt stacked in 100 dollar bills

PAUL Hogan has been left a prisoner in his own country after the tax office took advantage of his trip from the US to attend his mother's funeral and banned him from leaving.

The ATO's order stands until he pays an alleged multi-million dollar tax debt on undeclared income from Crocodile Dundee franchises.

Hogan, 70, was grounded after arriving in Sydney on Friday after the death of his mother Flo, who was 101.

Officers served the notice at the home of one of Hogan's daughters.

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...

Crazy debt collections gone wild. Threatening children and pets and using the force of government they have no authority to actually do.

Debt is scaring some South Florida students: More are saying "no thanks" to taking out college loans.

Broward College, in fact, is seeing a 40 percent drop in federally subsidized loans taken out this fall – after students go through a mandatory debt management workshop and hear about what faces them once they start making payments.