Get your '$20 trillion debt' hats ready folkssteemCreated with Sketch.

in money •  8 years ago 

Traders on Wall Street celebrated the Dow Jones index hitting 20,000 points yesterday, but there is another '20' looming that gives us less reason to party.

In just a few weeks the US national debt will pass the $20 trillion mark. $20 trillion = $20,000 billion or $20,000,000,000,000. That's 12 zeros!

How hard is it actually to spend 20 trillion dollars?

Do you know how hard it is to spend a trillion dollars? Let's take a quick example. If you would spent 1 dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in roughly 12 days. If you keep on spending a dollar every second for 32 years you would have spend a billion dollars. Only 1 billion in 32 years. At the same rate, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars. So to spend 20 trillion at 1 dollar per second have to live at least 620,000 years.

How much did Obama actually spent?


image source: washingtonsblog.com

Did you know President Obama has added roughly the same amount to the US national debt as the previous 43 presidents combined?
On Jan. 20, 2009, the date of Obama's inauguration, the US national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. He left the office on January 20, 2017 with a debt of nearly $19.95 trillion. So the US national debt nearly doubled during Obama's presidency.

During the 8 years of Obama's presidency the debt increased $9.3 trillion.

  • $9.3 trillion in 8 years
  • $1.1625 trillion a year
  • $3,184,931,507 a day
  • $2,211,758 each minute!
  • $36,863 each second!!

When will the $20 trillion be hit?

The current US National debt currently stands at $19,965,502,225,852, but it is already higher by the time you are reading this.

There is 'just' $34,581,690,148 to be spent until $20 trillion. At a rate of nearly $3,2 billion per day we can expect to pass the $20 trillion mark in less than 2 weeks. Probably around February 7th.

So, get your '$20 trillion debt' hats ready folks!


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Its scary how quickly this would be out of date!