Some Graphs on Debt and Deficits‏

A common theme among conservative talkshow guys and gold salesmen has been the Federal Debt. The debt is the accumulation of annual Federal deficits, the amount the government spends minus what the government takes in. Given the disaster of 2008, the recent administration has not been terrible year to year. The crucial problem is that such annual debts are added onto total deficits, year by year. These astonishing graphs are from http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

Sometime they load, sometimes they don't.

Here is the recent deficit history, remembering the national earnings are a factor in addition to government spending:

Here is the deficit as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product:

And a broader time chart of percentage of GDP:

Gross public debt is the sum of all sources of U.S. debt:

And this is the total Federal debt over the years as a percentage of GDP:

These last two show Monetized debt (blue), i.e., federal debt bought by the Federal Reserve System,  debt held by the federal government (red) e.g., as IOUs for Social Security, and other debt (green), i.e., debt in public hands, including foreign governments.

Chart D.11f: Recent US Federal Debt