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The total debt owed by Americans increased to $51 trillion in the first quarter of 2009. One way to put such a mind-bogglinig number in perspective is to compare it to the value of what Americans produce. Gross domestic product is roughly $14 trillion per year. Thus, Americans now owe $3.62 for every dollar of GDP. As can be seen in the chart below, this is a record.
By comparison, in 1980 Americans owed just $1.55 per dollar of GDP. The ratio began to rise sharply in the 1980s, leveled off in the early 1990s, and surged again in the late ‘90s, continuing to do so through the past decade. Most of the increase since 2000 reflects the rising indebtedness of the private sector – that is, borrowing by nonfinancial businesses, financial intermediaries (banks and such), and households. In contrast, government borrowing didn’t increase much relative to GDP in the past decade -- until last year, that is. Federal borrowing has increased rapidly since the third quarter of 2008, at a rate that is unprecedented in the post-WWII era. (The federal debt figure does not include the many trillions of dollars in entitlement benefits that Congress has promised to future generations. These liabilities pose a very real fiscal burden, but are excluded from official measures of debt.) Finally, a growing share of U.S. debt is owed to foreigners. As noted in the chart, the difference between the debt owed and the debt held by the "domestic sector" is due to (or from) foreigners. Up until the mid-1980s, Americans were net holders of foreign debt. After that, we began to owe more debt than we held. Roughly 10 percent of total U.S. debt is now owed to foreigners.
Source: Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Accounts. Latest data, Q1 2009. Click to Enlarge
This chart is one of many included in the 2009 edition of the AIER Chart Book, available for purchase in our online bookstore.
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