During a recent conversation I openly wondered how the US government would avoid a bankruptcy of their own. According to this site, the debt is in excess of $9 trillion:

The debt’s a problem, but we fixed a worse one before!

• Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter wiped out most of the World War II debt.  Take a look.

• Two parts of the federal government are running big surpluses.

The eye-popping $9 trillion gross national debt is owed by the "General Fund." That’s the part funded by our income taxes. Half of that goes for the military and to pay interest on the debt. Fortunately, two huge parts of the budget, Social Security and Medicare, are running huge surpluses.

The graph is very interesting, sadly proving that deficit spending can win elections (Reagan). It is also a bit shocking to see Clinton (the supposedly social conservative who supports universal health care) paying off the debt.

During the debt conversation, a point was made that the deficit is not an issue due to the US gold reserves. I will admit, I knew nothing about gold other than the fact that countries had untied their currency to gold decades ago. Turns out that gold won’t save the US, even at $1K per ounce the stock piled value is $250 billion. That is about half of what Iraq has cost so far according to this site.

As Rumsfeld was once quoted as saying (I paraphrase), Ronald Regan proved that no one pays attention to deficit spending.