"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message ...
riverman wrote:

By the way, for a real eye-opener, try graphing this data on excel. Then
project to 2008. Here, I'l help you:
http://www.die.net/musings/national_debt/

Using logarithmic scale (2nd graph) the largest increase in federal debt
occurred after (not during!) the Civil War. I have never heard this
before.
Was it due to the high costs of Reconstruction?

Or else its just a bookkeeping artifact from the debt of the South being
added to the coffers? I won't pretend to know for real.


And contrary to those who say "debt was worse during WW2" note that
per-capita debt is much higher now. It had started to decline a bit
during the Clinton era.

From a river-runner's perspective, I suppose the best thing about this
is that the Feds won't be able to afford Auburn Dam now!

I love graphs.

Me too, but I don't fully understand the economics behind the numbers. I
hear folks talk about how the Natl Debt is a bad thing, other folks say its
an either-way kind of thing, and still others say that its actually a
healthy, even highly desirable thing. Beats me...I think its like personal
debt: the guy with all the toys has all the debt, and will tell you right up
to foreclosure day just how great debt is. If foreclosure day never comes,
he wins. If it does, then he probably has all sorts of twists and turns to
play the numbers and get away unscathed. It probably means that he was right
all along, and that debt is a good thing, but it makes me worried,
especially in times of huge financial upheavals, as that means we are in
waters without precendent, and no one can rightfully claim to have
experience in what is the right thing to do. With the dollar at an all-time
low (all recent time, anyway) against foreign currencies, and with the
petro-dollar vs. euro-dollar skirmishes going on, as well as this expensive
and endless war and the lack of US sympathies in some other major players, I
think we gotta just hold on to our assets and see what happens.

--riverman