Talk:Financial position of the United States

Graphs are Well Out of Date
It looks like all of the graphs on this page stop at 2008. Can we maybe update this to something a bit closer to 2015? At a glance, it is not factual. Miserlou (talk) 06:25, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

The total cumulative debt of a nation is as important in an encyclopedia as governmental debt.

This page needs to be kept so that those exploring the debt and deficit pages can have an opportunity to see not only the governmental debt but the total debt.

It is possible that the there is a total debt number for the US (and other nations) that officially exists somewhere else -- but due to the development of wikipeida does not exist here yet.

Eyreland (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, need to update based on something like https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial-report/government-financial-position-and-condition.html
 * it's not only for data accuracy but the situation has drastically changed especially when you consider how globalized and synchronized health security is managed and led by the US/UN/EU etc Generalist1 (talk) 01:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Notability
I don't think this topic is particularly notable, receiving as it does no treatment in the mainstream literature. If notability is not verified by the citation of reliable sources, I will put it up for deletion.

On a more intellectual note, aggregating debt across net debtors and net creditors is an absurdity. The reason that no official institution or reliable source publishes the statistic is because it conveys absolutely nothing about the state of the economy. That said, it could be used to derive macroeconomic leverage. That is not a dollar amount, but a ratio, which might be notable if the literature supported such a thing. However, as an indicator itself, aggregated debt is useless. Bastin 12:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Is it really any more inane than the exceedingly popular indulgence of talking about the (long-term) “federal debt” of thousands of different agencies relative to the largely unrelated (and strictly annual) GDP/GNP, rather than similarly annual figures such as the deficit or interest service? Especially absent any knowledge of the trillions of dollars of that “debt” “owed” by the federal government to itself, or (as noted in this article) the trillions of dollars “owed” to private entities who themselves owe money to said “debtor.” Better yet, declaring this republic “bankrupt” on the basis of such baseless comparisons in spite of sitting atop hundreds of trillions of dollars in wealth, all over “debts” barely in the double-digit trillions?

I agree blindly smooshing uncleared debt numbers from different entities together is somewhat silly, but with the inclusion of (long-term) wealth rather than (annual) income, it's an enormous improvement in perspective over the presently mainstream practice of looking at debts in a vacuum. Ideally, figures identifying who actually owes how much to whom would tell us the amount of debt which would theoretically remain after central net settlement, rather than just all debts versus all assets. 72.130.58.85 (talk) 21:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)


 * No this is definitely notable when people want to debate or think about the credibility of the United states and in doing so the credibility of their currency the financial position of the nation state will invariably come up and topics that fall under this subject should be listed here this article is definitely not structured well and does not contain the more notable points that fall under the subject Generalist1 (talk) 01:52, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not that the financial position of the United states is not notable obviously it is notable it's it the article is just not structured the right way and it doesn't include the correct points but if you think the United states is a notable subject then certainly its financial position is a notable subject it's just that this article doesn't list the notable points or components of this subject
 * so for all intents and purposes like the current social cosmos relies on like the gravity or space-time media of the US dollar and currency and the validity and definition of that currency has everything to do with the financial position of the United states Generalist1 (talk) 01:55, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Move and rename
I've been working every now and then at retooling this article; it occurs to me that although "cumulative debt per person" is in some sense meaningful it's only one aspect of the overall debt of the United States (public and private). I have preferred using debt-to-GDP however as this gives a more consistent and meaningful measure of debt over time.

Additionally, speaking of debt exclusively is not a complete picture either since debt is inherently matched to assets, and those don't necessarily track GDP either. Discussions of other financial obligations, such as derivatives and unfunded liabilities, are also germane to give a picture of the overall financial position of our economy. It would also be relevant then to discuss things like the scale of corporate equity markets in the US, real estate, interest payments, and a breakdown of the US's financial relations with the rest of the world (this data is mainly available with extensive detail from the Flow of Funds reports the Fed issues).

So while I think that that overall picture of the US's financial position is a viable, important, encyclopedic topic, I'm not satisfied that "financial position of the United States" is particularly clear, so I'd be open to suggestions. I do think that it is better than "cumulative debt per person" though.

Beyond being encyclopedic, I personally think this topic is important (and I will spend some time working on it) because - even though there is a tremendous amount of hard data out there about this stuff - this data doesn't seem to be widely disseminated, and so there's a lot of misinformation and misleading statements passed around widely and even dangerously. (my favorite being the spooky $215 trillion notional value of derivatives that gets bandied about as the "burden" of derivatives) Equilibrium007 (talk) 20:45, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I very much agree with the more holistic direction you took the article, but it still relies on the same US document series as where I first encountered such figures, though some (but not all) of the holes have been filled in. I wonder if there is enough reasonably high-quality data available to make more standardized and international articles, cumulatively outstanding equivalents to some of the strictly annual lists in—for instance—Template:GDP_country_lists and Template:Finance_country_lists. 72.130.58.85 (talk) 21:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Family net worth
The US median family income is very different from what most people think. Here is some information for the article:

http://middleclasspoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-trails-at-least-15-oecd-countries-in.html

Pipo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 14:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

net financial assets
Shouldn't they add up to zero? --Alex1011 (talk) 12:58, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, assets (such as minerals) and liabilities (such as loans) are “stocks,” and as such have value independent of any financial transaction which has happened, because any one of them may be completely independent from anything else in the economy. What do add up to zero are income (such as gifts) and deficits (such as payments,) which are “flows” because each is merely the counterpart of its matching opposite. 66.91.236.73 (talk) 06:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It is true that non-financial assets do not add up to zero. Minerals are not financial assets. And this is true for factories, buildings and so on. But financial assets, receivables and debts, should add up to zero. It does not matter that these are stocks. --Alex1011 (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

This in the article is what I mean: --Alex1011 (talk) 19:53, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Financial position of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20101021052607/http://www.ustreas.gov:80/education/faq/markets/national-debt.shtml to http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/markets/national-debt.shtml

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 00:41, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

External debt
Can somebody please insert in this article the list of countries holding the US external debt? A pie chart would be great. Thanks! 47.17.16.137 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Financial position of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130120020448/http://www.htisec.com/en/research/shownews.jsp?newsType=DJ&newsid=c-20120808DN019794 to http://www.htisec.com/en/research/shownews.jsp?newsType=DJ&newsid=c-20120808DN019794

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 23:10, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Is this a hack?
How is it that the net worth number is $50000000 trillion? Stuntrunner (talk) 06:16, 11 February 2020 (UTC)


 * fixed. Satani (talk) 15:57, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Graphs out of date.
No such data for 2021 q4. 2405:201:800B:A8E4:A88D:217E:637B:ABCE (talk) 04:55, 22 December 2021 (UTC)