For those of you who like triva - out of a list of 197 countries 193 of them are in debt. The four who are not in debt are so small I never heard of them before. If you are interested in learning about the country debts, you can go to the CIA web site: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2079rank.html
The info is a bit old but they have it compiled nicely and this is a very interesting web site to browse in.
After reading this info I could not help but wonder: 'who holds the mortgage to the 193 countries that are in debt?' Here is where it gets interesting. Every developed country is in debt - each year they spend more money than they make. For instance China and Japan are in debt but the spend money purchasing significant amounts of American debt: betting on the strength of the dollar. Countries like this do not want to see the dollar fall, unless they were interested in failure of the U.S. economy; and it is hard to see how any foreign nation would want to see the collapse of the American economy. Well for the most part. Of course, holding American debt and being capable of influencing world economics does put one in a position to influence U.S. political policies.
Lets look at the U.S. to get a better idea of how this national debt business works. To start with, we can divide up the total national debt into two different categories: public debt and intragovernmental debt. Intragovernmental debt is money that the federal government has sort of borrowed from various federal government agencies, such as Social Security. It is kind of like having a saving account for your winter heating bills and you borrowing money from it during the summer so that you can take a vacation. The second category, of our national debt, is public debt.
For the most part, our public debt is held by:
* Various Pension funds
* Foreign governments
* Mutual funds
* Foreign investors
* American investors
* Hedge funds
Another way of looking at our national debt is to divide it into the three basic holdings: Public 23%, Federal Reserve 45% and Foreign Owned 23%. In reality, intergovernmental debt refers primarily to governmental borrowing from the Federal Reserve. The spin-doctors like to label this as "the government borrowing from itself." This is a crock of bull crap. The Federal Reserve is made up of twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are private institutions operating collectively in a quasi-governmental capacity. Each year the U.S. government spends more than it receives in tax revenue: a budget deficit. So it borrows money. To do this, the government prints up treasuries, which are sold on the open market. In most cases there is not sufficient interest to buy all the treasuries so the government turns to the Federal Reserve to purchase the rest of the debt. It may sound like the government is dealing with a very diverse set of lenders; but, when you strip away the various names, it all boils down to the fact that banking holds the mortgage to America, as-well-as almost all the nations of the world.
In summary, the dollar is the international currency standard. The U.S. prints dollars in much the same way monopoly money is printed. The dollar is then used around the world just like monopoly money. Country 'A' borrow dollars from country 'D' and uses them to support activities in country 'P', which is spending dollars in country 'Q', which is loaning dollars to country 'A'. It is just like one great big monopoly game - after all, it is only paper. There is no real collateral! The value of the dollar is a function of the strength of American and the availability of the dollar itself. What is the value of the dollar going to be tomorrow; if the U.S. keeps shrinking in international power and we continue flooding the world with brand new printed dollars? No, our country will not collapse. But, we will have sold our national soul to the banks - the puppet masters - the ones controlling national and international policy. And, the average American will not even know that it has happened: except for higher taxes.
Bottom line: what our government is letting the banking world do is wrong! Our grand children are going to dig up our corpses and urinate on them.
Keep voting Republican and/or Democrat … but, the lesser of two evils is not the Christian solution!