Our recent era of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility means we are throwing an additional $1 trillion or more on the pile every year. The only reason this staggering debt load hasn’t crushed us already is that the Treasury has been able to service it through historically low interest rates (now below 2 percent).
These easy terms keep debt-service payments to a relatively manageable $300 billion per year.
On the current trajectory, the national debt likely will hit $20 trillion in a few years. If, by that time, interest rates were to return to 5 percent (a low rate by postwar standards) interest payments on the debt could run around $1 trillion per year.
Such a sum would represent almost 40 percent of total current federal revenues and likely would constitute the single largest line item in the federal budget. A balance sheet so constructed would create an immediate fiscal crisis in the United States. - in Washington Times
Peter Schiff`s comments on the economy, stock markets, politics and gold. Schiff is the renowned writer of the bestseller Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse.
