<![CDATA[I've been thinking about something a realtor friend told me last night. Yesterday, three homeowners called a banker she knows and said that, if the banks were going to be bailed out, they weren't going to pay their mortgage. These were regular mortgage payers with no history of credit problems. They have simply given up on the relationship between the economy and themselves that they've believed all their lives.
So, I looked into the total US debt, the total of debt owed by low-income countries, the total mortgage debt in the United States and other factors, such as total consumer debt, in the clusterf*^%$k we call the economy.
The United States has $10.2 trillion dollars of national debt as of today. Only $5.9 trillion of that is held by the public, the rest is intragovernmental debt, held by various government entities as part of borrowing conducted to keep things going.
As of August, there was $2.5 trillion in U.S. consumer revolving and nonrevolving debt. Low-income nations owe about $523 billion to rich countries, including the United States.
What if we call it all even? Just erase all debts, including all debts owed by developing nations, except those U.S. Treasury notes held by the public