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According to CNN.com in a story dated June 12, 2003 - "Moneymakers in Washington are contemplating printing a new series of the $2 bill, which is by far the least-used small note in circulation. The last time the notes were issued was in 1996 (it bears a 1995 series stamp), when about 164 million were made."

The US Dept. of Treasury confirms that the $2 bill does indeed exist.

Funny how so many of the tech savvy alphageeks on slashdot don't have basic researching skills to find out facts on their but rather follow others like sheep and just assume what the other guy is saying is true

The US Treasury holds about 11 billion dollars in gold, in bullion and coin: "US Treasury Owned Gold" Microsoft could buy the lot and scarcely notice the dent in it's cash reserves. Where do you find enough gold to sustain the world economy at it's present level and avoid a catastrophic deflationary spiral in which "real" money becomes unobtainable?

They don't authenticate in ANY way that I'm aware of.

12/31/1959 290,797,771,717.63
12/30/1960 290,216,815,241.68
1959-1960 ---- 580,956,475.95 surplus

I think that is correct, however, if you notice the numbers at the federal debt web site, the federal debt has grown every year since 1987. i.e. there has been no budget surplus for a long time, despite what politicians would like you to think.

Isn't true, there hasn't been any "surplus". When Clinton got out we we're in DEBT and we still are, just worse.

12/31/1980 $930,210,000,000.00
The Debt after Reagan's first term:

12/31/1984 $1,662,966,000,000.00 (+.6 trillion)
The Debt when Bush I got in:

09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16 (+1.6 trillion for Reagan in eight years)
When Bush I left and Clinton got in:

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66 (+1.4 trillion for Bush I in four years)
The Debt after Clinton's first term:

09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73 (+1.1 trillion)
The Debt when Clinton left office:

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86 (+1.6 trillion for Clinton in 8 years)
The Current debt:

02/10/2004 $7,012,102,110,400.63 (+1.3 trillion for Bush II in 3 years)
All of the last few presidents have been steadily increasing the debt by huge margins, it's nothing new (unfortunately).
See Government Debt or Official Current US Debt

12/31/1980 $930,210,000,000.00
The Debt after Reagan's first term:

12/31/1984 $1,662,966,000,000.00 (+.6 trillion)
The Debt when Bush I got in:

09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16 (+1.6 trillion for Reagan in eight years)
When Bush I left and Clinton got in:

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66 (+1.4 trillion for Bush I in four years)
The Debt after Clinton's first term:

09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73 (+1.1 trillion)
The Debt when Clinton left office:

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86 (+1.6 trillion for Clinton in 8 years)
The Current debt:

02/10/2004 $7,012,102,110,400.63 (+1.3 trillion for Bush II in 3 years)
All of the last few presidents have been steadily increasing the debt by huge margins, it's nothing new (unfortunately).
See Government Debt or Official Current US Debt

2003 U.S. GDP: just shy of 11 trillion

Current U.S. national debt: just over 7 trillion, and growing at an absurd rate due to current fiscal policy.

We're fucked, my friend.

According to federal law, there is no legit reason to copy currency. Unless you can give an example of something that is both legit and illegal at the same time, I'm going to remain unconvinced.

The US Dept. of the Treasury disagrees with you.

Yes, there are guidelines about how it can be reproduced, but you can use images of US currency quite legally.

( Now, before everyone goes into shock at seeing the "s" word. . . )

However , the fact remains that the national debt increased far, far less during Clinton's terms (due to a (eventually) balanced budget) than it has for a very long time (you yourself noted that, according to your data, the debt increased in his second term by less than half of what it had in his first) , and than it is currently projected to for the next 10 years or so. This projected increase is due very directly to the projected budget deficits caused by Bush's tax cuts and his spending increases. And if we look at the information pointed to above(thanks, IVotedIn200!), we see that, starting from the end of FY2001 ( beginning the first full fiscal year Bush could conceivably have an effect ), to today, right at the top of the page, the debt has increased by 1.3 trillion dollars. But here, I'll even give you the 400 billion increase from 9/30/2001 to 2002, because, using another page from the same site (the Treasury Department's, for those who aren't paying attention, and up-to-date) we see that, in fact, the debt increased under Clinton ( 1993 - 2001 ) by about 1.2 trillion. So if we take the 400 billion from FY 2002 from Bush and tack it onto Clinton, we have: 1.6 trillion over 9 years vs. 8-900 billion over 2! And without being generous to Bush like that, Clinton and Bush have grown the national debt by about the same amout, except Bush did it 3 times faster!!

But what do facts matter, anyways? Ideology and ranting about Al Sharpton is so much more fun.

The national debt, by the way, has been around since the the United States assumed the debt amassed during the Revolutionary War by the Continental Congress. The 20th century made it go way, way up, what with the two World Wars, the Depression, and increased military spending in the second half of the century (FDR is your man if you want to complain about increasing the debt).

( Now, before everyone goes into shock at seeing the "s" word. . . )

However , the fact remains that the national debt increased far, far less during Clinton's terms (due to a (eventually) balanced budget) than it has for a very long time (you yourself noted that, according to your data, the debt increased in his second term by less than half of what it had in his first) , and than it is currently projected to for the next 10 years or so. This projected increase is due very directly to the projected budget deficits caused by Bush's tax cuts and his spending increases. And if we look at the information pointed to above(thanks, IVotedIn200!), we see that, starting from the end of FY2001 ( beginning the first full fiscal year Bush could conceivably have an effect ), to today, right at the top of the page, the debt has increased by 1.3 trillion dollars. But here, I'll even give you the 400 billion increase from 9/30/2001 to 2002, because, using another page from the same site (the Treasury Department's, for those who aren't paying attention, and up-to-date) we see that, in fact, the debt increased under Clinton ( 1993 - 2001 ) by about 1.2 trillion. So if we take the 400 billion from FY 2002 from Bush and tack it onto Clinton, we have: 1.6 trillion over 9 years vs. 8-900 billion over 2! And without being generous to Bush like that, Clinton and Bush have grown the national debt by about the same amout, except Bush did it 3 times faster!!

But what do facts matter, anyways? Ideology and ranting about Al Sharpton is so much more fun.

The national debt, by the way, has been around since the the United States assumed the debt amassed during the Revolutionary War by the Continental Congress. The 20th century made it go way, way up, what with the two World Wars, the Depression, and increased military spending in the second half of the century (FDR is your man if you want to complain about increasing the debt).

Obviously, Clinton wasn't a perfect president (such a thing has never existed). I disagree with him on plenty of issues (blowjobs, for one). But against a president to whom "getting things done" means giving away money to the wealthy, when we're already spending it faster than we're making it, I'd take Clinton any day.

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes /fed-debt.html

What's very telling is that from 1992 to 1996 the national debt rose 1.3 TRILLION dollars. From 1996 to 2004 is rose that same amount.

So Clinton raises the debt 1.3 trillion in 4 years and another 500 billion in his second term. From 2000 to present the debt was raised another 500 billion dollars.

So where is the 1 Trillion that Bush is responsible for?

That site shows estimates, not facts, for years after 1999. That's considerably out of date and doesn't include sweeping changes in tax lawas since then.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm#y ears shows that the total public debt increased from 5,674,178,209,886.86 on 09/29/2000 to 6,783,231,062,743.62 on 09/30/2003.

The national debt figures are kept by the Treasury and can be found here:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm

There are some cautionary notes about the figures. Watch out for current dollar and chained figures. If you are comparing the debt to the GDP, do not do so using the chained figures as they may not have used the same [in|de]flation or base year. As a basic yardstick, if they both use the same base year, you're probably OK, but it's still shaky. Using unadjusted figures for comparison over time will yield more accurate results.

That said, it's worth noting that we've added $20B to the national debt--this month--and since taking office George II has added roughly a $1.5T to the debt, for a total of over $7T. There's this Republican mantra that deficit spending and ballooning the debt don't matter, but the smoke and mirrors of it is that the economic gains they claim can be almost dollar for dollar attributed to their irresponsible borrowing habits like the Yuppie who leverages everything for a new BMW. They claim the Democrats are worse, but the numbers are all there...then of course, they come out saying, "oh, we're all just as bad. That's partisan talk." Oh, piss off guys, no, Republicans ARE worse about this. MUCH worse. When the numbers start getting into 200-300% difference, it's not exactly a point of subtlety.

You definitly nailed me on one point. I was mindlessly using the word deficit when I should have been using the word debt. It wasn't a matter of being confused, just using the wrong word. You should have been listening to what I meant, not what I said! ;)

As to the Clinton surpluses, they were only in the two peak years of the boom, and it was debatable that they even existed at all. I don't recall the details, but the bottom line was that the DEBT was larger each year then the last.

As to your assertion that Bush had the luxury of a TRILLION DOLLAR surplus, that is just plain wrong. By the time Bush took office the country had been in a full recession for almost a year.

Government deficit is expected and even good in a down market, in the same way that it is acceptible for a business to take on debt in order to finance new areas of growth. The problem comes in when the debt gets out of hand, or isn't paid down from the results of the investment. I disagree with you assertion that the US has borrowed beyond it's means, but I do agree that we are headed that direction.

I think Bush's record on the environment and individual freedom is terrible, but I don't see that the national debt can be placed at his feet. He was handed an almost 6 trillian dollar debt, a country in recession, an under-funded military, and then 9/11.

If you want to blame him for wasting money on the war in Iraq I could understand that, but that's a much bigger discussion. Those that supported the war will always say it was worth the cost, and those that didn't will always say it was a waste. Were already far enough off topic that I would rather not jump into that mess.

You are right, I did confuse debt/deficit

The current debt is about 7T

The current budget deficit of 500B increases the debt by $1724K/person

But at the start of this administration it was about 5.6T so, he (they) should be held accountable for 1.4T in additional debt or 4800/person. An argument could be made that the current administration should have reduced the 5.6T, but thats getting even farther off topic.

All that being said, I still agree that its too much.

You are right, I did confuse debt/deficit

The current debt is about 7T

The current budget deficit of 500B increases the debt by $1724K/person

But at the start of this administration it was about 5.6T so, he (they) should be held accountable for 1.4T in additional debt or 4800/person. An argument could be made that the current administration should have reduced the 5.6T, but thats getting even farther off topic.

All that being said, I still agree that its too much.

It's ILLEGAL to put money in your scanner and scan it for ANY use or ANY purpose

somebody better tell these people!

Because the filters are more restrictive than the actual laws?

Because you don't want your work to look like ass?

Because HP isn't a recognized law enforcement or treasury official, and shouldn't be deciding what I am or am not allowed to print?

From rulesforuse.org:

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:

• the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
• the illustration is one-sided; and
• all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.

No prohibition against resolutions or realism. But, oops, can't scan in the bill to open it in Photoshop to resize it.

Note that our Canadian laws also state that the image cannot be colour.

Oh, and just for fun, try downloading the picture from the US Treasury website, which shows the required resizings, and try printing it. If the file won't print, that's bad.

or even (gasp!) make novelty bills with my picture in the center. All of these are completely legit uses for scanning and manipulating currency...

Actually, if you knew the law, you would know that just taking a bill "as is", putting your own photo in the middle and reprinting it is only legal when following certain guidelines.

You can't make true novelty money that's similar except for your photo, if you really wanted to, you would most likely want it double-sided. That's illegal in the US. Also, you'd have to make it a a certain degree larger or smaller than legal tender, so as it's not easily passable.

Simply make the program follow the laws as stated?

Not really hard to do?

Well, someone could post this address from their website on some IRC channel and a couple of newsgroups: webmaster@ttb.treas.gov. Or is a /. comment sufficient?

BTW, I guess this is the webmaster's picture, since "he" says on the front page: "The input you provide can help TTB better serve you and our other customers. Please feel free to email your ideas to us "?

Note that their TTB Job Postings do NOT include a Perl programmer.

I think they should give the users an opportunity to follow the law. There are many valid and legal uses for manipulating currency in a graphics editing program. It seems like Adobe, of all companies, would realize that.

And with JASC doing it also, it kind of sounds like a government requested thing, which is not leaving the best taste in my mouth.

RP

This one is specific to US bills and this one is the parent site.

Just make sure you follow ALL the rules or they can get you.

Well, if you'd check the links in the news item you'd notice this is an enforcement of the law.

Plus the problem seems to only crop up when you go to print, so Photoshop isn't imposing any restrictions greater than the law does. You can still view and edit to your hearts content on the computer.

I'm sorry, but you're really going to have to provide some hard figures to back up that claim.

Here are a few figures. Most of them are comments on the direct cost (costs to block and clean up), only a few discuss the indirect costs (network congestion, bandwidth waste and expenses, accidentally lost messages, cost of personal time, frustration, etc.)

US National Debt, as of today -- $6,915,186,083,875.25.

SUMMARY OF STATISTICS BELOW -- 40% of spam management [corporate costs] are over 90,000,000,000, lost business estimated at 30,000,000,000, identity theft and successful spam scams range from several hundred million dollars to tens of billions of dollars, individual spam managemnt time, effort, and resources globally is estimated at between 100 and 200 billion USD. Combined total so far, 15-40% of the national debt, each year [depending on cost of successful scams and identity theft]. Nobody dares estimate additional damages, such as slowed-down network responses for everything else. Nor do they discuss the added infrastructure that has been purchaced by everybody from telcos and cable companies to ISPs to Universities to corporations, for handling support calls, developing in-house solutions to spam problems, educating users, and other indirect costs. [Have you ever considered the costs of training seminars, in terms of paychecks for all attendees? What about building costs, phone lines, computers, networks, desks, security, cubicles, and paychecks for all the AOL, MCI, and other companies just because of all the 'what do I do with all this spam' calls?]

Case study: Company of roughly 500 employees, roughly a half-million dollars each year, and climbing.

NYT article "the economic cost is $874 a year for every office worker with an e-mail account, which multiplied by 100 million such workers amounts to about $87 billion for the United States." ... "In total, corporations will spend $120 million this year on antispam systems, Ferris Research said. (Or $635 million, if one would rather listen to Radicati.)" [Corporate cost, almost $90 BILLION USD this year.] ... "Yet for one of the largest Internet backbone carriers, MCI, the spam explosion has more indirect costs. MCI receives a half-million complaints a month that its network is being used to transmit spam" ... " Indeed, the biggest single cost to the company is unpaid bills from the spammers it evicts. 'Spammers know they are going to be kicked off, so they won't pay their first few months' bill,' said Craig Silliman, the legal director for MCI's network and facilities operation. 'By the time you catch them, they turn into a significant net loss.'" ... "America Online now simply discards nearly 80 percent of the 2.5 billion e-mail messages sent a day to addresses at AOL.com" ... "A cost that is hard to measure is the losses from e-mail users defrauded by spammers. One rapidly growing category of e-mail fraud is what is known as phishing, in which e-mail messages purporting to be from a big company ask for credit card and bank information. When credit card numbers are stolen, account holders face the time and bother of putting things right, though most banks do not hold them responsible for losses. But if the spammer buys computer equipment from a Web site with a stolen number, the seller suffers a loss, perhaps never knowing it was an indirect victim of spam." ... "False positives have become so extensive that the research firms, which have spent so much time assessing the cost of spam and the need for spam filters, now have a new research topic. "We have a report coming out in the next two weeks," said David Ferris, who runs the research company bearing his name. "We think companie

Actually, based on these Treasury Department figures, I calculate the foreign held percentage of US Treasury securities at about 21%. Another 41% of the public debt is held by the federal government itself (in the Social Security, Medicare and Highway trust funds). The Treasury Department publishes lots of good data about the public debt on the web.

From the first link you can see that China controls about 8.6% of the foreign debt, trailing the UK (9.8%) and Japan (33%).

Now here's a question. If Federal trusts control 41% of the public debt, who is going to lend us than $2.8 Trillion (more by then) when the Republicans "privatize" Social Security and Medicare? I'll go out on a limb and speculate that US private citizens and pension funds will not fill that void.

Bush has done everything he can to give the U.S. a massive $6E12 deficit

Don't let the facts get in the way of your argument...

Thanks to the US Treasury Fact Sheet on the Gross National Debt we find:

Estimated gross federal debt for fiscal year 2000: $5.687 trillion

Estimated gross federal debt for fiscal year 2003: $5.948 trillion

Via the magic of subtraction we find that the nation debt has increased around $0.261 trillion under GWB's watch thus far. An increase of around 1.5% per year.

At this rate, the national debt will have increased about 6% under Bush's first term. Compare that with the nearly 30% increase in Clinton's first term. (Both of these, however, are eclipsed by the over 70% increase in the national debt in Reagan's first term).

-Mike

OOGG want correct your misinformed view of financial system. Government borrow funds by selling Treasury bonds. Holders of bonds expect paid interest, not imaginary money.

Also, banks, holders of money oppose inflation. OOGG have misfortune of holding caveman stone money, US Confederate currency, many old German marks. (OOGG learn hard way to avoid sovereign credit risk.) Inflation wipe out value of currency. Even US nickel once buy large candy bar. Now, same nickel buy 1/10 candy bar. OOGG need diet, but 1/10 candy bar less value than 1 candy bar. Bank with nickel in reserve lose value just as much as OOGG.

Federal reserve notes are printed by Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Issued in exchange for funds held by Federal reserve. That is, Federal Reserve exchange real electronic money for real paper money.

Summary: every thing you say completely wrong. Even stone age caveman have better understanding of money than a whoabot. Thank you.

Um, I think you'll find the debt (current account deficit) is $7 trillion

Unfortunately, the US financial system is balkanized, with only one-fifth of the banks regulated by the OCC,and the rest regulated by the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OTS, and others. I can't locate warnings from those regulators.

Warnings from bank regulators to their banks can only do so much. The scam targets the user, and no one is responsible for educating the user.

Scams like this are one of the reason I've told my 70+ mother not to use Internet banking. Unfortunately, she's now looking into Internet brokerage. No matter what I do to secure her system, she is the weak link in the security chain. Many other Internet users are in the same boat.

Any ideas from slashdot land on how to educate those users, and how to protect them?

This from Estes Rockets:

Homeland Security Act and Model Rocketry

The Homeland Security Act includes the "Safe Explosives Act" which has placed even more responsibility on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in an effort to keep explosives out of the hands of terrorists. As would be expected there are now more explosives regulations. However, some of the information that has been provided to and reported by the media has several issues confused. Visit http://www.atf.treas.gov/explarson/safexpact/model rockets.htmto obtain accurate information with regard to the ATF and model rocketry. UPS, FedEx and other carriers continue to carry model rocket engines (model rocket motors that contain no more than 62.5 grams of propellant per device) that are properly packaged, marked, labeled and documented in accordance with the regulations of the U.S. Department of Transportation (49 CFR). The same is true with regard to the United States Postal Service for Toy Propellant Devices (Model Rocket Motors and Igniters that are pre-approved for mailing by the USPS) that contain no more than 30 grams of propellant per device.

I don't know what planet you're from, but here on Earth Bush inherited a large budget surplus

Apparently, you are not all that interested in looking at actual facts (Bushwatch.com?? Really??).

Here is the real data. You might notice that Federal Debt increased every year under Bill Clinton. So much for that "budget surplus" he bragged about.

Oh, and Public Debt as a percentage of GDP has actually declined from 33.6% to 32.7% under George W. Bush.

Bruce

I'm not aware of any state that has a ban on .50 BMG ammo. I believe there are some states with restrictions on the use of tracer ammo on state land due to fire danger.

The temperatures required to start "cooking off" ammo are never going to happen in the cargo hold of a plane unless it crashes and burns. Remember that this ammo is intended to be chambered in machine guns that get very hot after a few hundred prior rounds.

I've never heard of any legal requirements on ammunition shelf-life (In fact I regularly see pre-WWII surplus ammo advertised for sale). There is no licensing of AP or other exotic ammo, the only restrictions I'm aware of are that hollow points are illegal in New Jersey, and AP ammo is banned from importation or production in calibers for which handguns are chambered, there may be other state and local regulations. Buyers of ammunition must be 18yoa for rifle ammo and 21yoa for handgun ammo.

I suggest you look over these FAQs from the BATF.

(Actually, technically, it never moved more than a few dozen feet. More or less every nation in the world except France keeps their gold at Fort Knox, and International trades are done by carting gold from one room to another inside the base)


Actually, that's incorrect. The majority of "trade gold" is held in the New York Federal Reserve, not Fort Knox. Fort Knox contains mainly Gold, Platinum, and Silver used to back our currencies. Althought there is exceptions, there are no "room" inside of Fort Knox for this type of trading.
Also, no nations store all of their gold in the US. Like I said, it's considered "commodities" or "trade" gold, used expressly to make it easier for one nation to pay the other.

I mean, really, do you think the entire world's gold stock is only 8967 tons? (Figure from June 2003 Treasury Report)

Either your pulling a majority of your "facts" out of your ass, or your International Economics teacher is a moron, or the University of Delaware is a shit school.
Ah, quick bit of reasearch shows UofD as a "middle of the road" college. Not great, but not bad. Just there. That explains a lot.

Next time, don't be a puppet of your uneducated professor, do your own research.

Isn't financial data required to be protected by something equivelent to HIPPA?

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) mostly revolves around (suprise) health related personal information. Financial organizations need to pay attention to it for their own employee's information, and for any health-related organizations they provide services for, but it's not the biggest IT driver for financial companies.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 is more closely targeted on financial organizations. Also, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issues a lot of regulations that financial institutions need to pay close attention to. Insofar as Acxiom acts (acxts?) as a third-party vendor for financial institutions, they are also expected to meet those regulations when dealing with financial customer data.

If, as the first article states, "All of the information was encrypted," then they were probably not in violation of any of these rules or regulations. It sounds like all the guy did was pull encrypted files off a publicly accessible FTP dropoff point, probably after sniffing plaintext authentication credentials on the network. Stupid move by Acxiom, but not fatal; bad PR but no real impact.

You quote CNN quoting President Clinton. My entire point is that the whole claim that there was a budget surplus is either fancy accounting or outright lies. You quoting CNN quoting President Clinton does not prove your case--I don't deny Clinton said it. He did. What I reject is that he spoke the truth.

Check out the U.S. Treasury yourself where you can see the U.S. debt on a day-day-day basis, or at the end of each fiscal year. Tell me where you see the national debt being reduced by $223 billion in any year of the Clinton administration. You won't. It didn't happen. The debt hasn't been reduced since 1960. THAT IS THE FACT. You are trying to defend a lie from the Clinton administration. I highly suggest you educate yourself as to the truth before committing yourself to a position that is wrong and will just make you look uninformed.

Now, after you click the above link and do your homework come back and let me know what year of the Clinton administration you see the debt go down. Don't base your answer on what Clinton said--base your answer on facts. As you know, politicians often bend them and Clinton was the master bender. But the numbers from the U.S. Treasury don't lie.

There has been no surplus since 1960. The numbers from the U.S. Treasury prove that. Anyone that tells you different is not being honest or is uninformed.

Check the official record: here. Please tell me in what year you see the debt go down.

Once you realize that you can't believe everything that Democrats tell you you will be much better equipped to understand reality.

It's a natural reaction to the Democrats trying to pin it on the Republicans.

Who is responsible for the national debt counter being turned on?

We've had a debt since 1791. As the same source shows, Clinton increased the debt 1.610 trillion, to Reagan's increase of $1.672 trillion--a whopping $62 billion difference. And considering Reagan received an economy in recession, decreased taxes, and defeated the Soviet Union it is amazing he only spent $62 billion more than Clinton who received a growing economy, increased taxes, and didn't really do anything in his 8 years.

Who spend over 500 billion dollars in their first 3 months of office?

Hmm, well, considering the budget in place 3 months into Bush's presidency was Clinton's last budget that is actually a very good question.

Who is in control of the senate and congress?

Republicans now. Your point?

Who is starting wars just to boost their popularity rating not even caring that we could not afford it?

Do you really believe that? Bush's father didn't win his next election starting a war. Bush's current popularity is back to where it was pre-9/11. I don't see any significant increase in his popularity because of this war and if Democrats succeed at their current publicity campaign, they might actually convince the electorate that Bush lied about it and it might actually HURT him.

I don't think you are really paying attention to current events.

Who is resposible for the fact that you now PERSONALLY owe the federal government $72,000?

$72k? How do you figure? The debt (as of last night) was $6,722,160,964,748.21 and if we assume 280 million citizens that's $24k each, not $72k. I assume you are dividing by the number of taxpayers, but that's not really accurate since anyone can make money and most of the children eventually will. So dividing by the current number of taxpayers isn't very useful since it's not necessarily the current taxpayers that will pay it all.

But to answer your question:

1791-1980: $930 billion
Reagan: $1.672 trillion. Started with a bad economy, cut taxes, and defeated Soviet Union.
Bush Sr: $1.462 trillion. Started with a good economy, increased taxes, got stuck in a 9-month recession, fought war with Iraq.
Clinton: $1.610 trillion. Received a growing economy, increased taxes, didn't do much else.
GWB: $1.05 trillion to-date. Reecived an economy falling into recession, 9/11 happened, slow recovery, war in Afghanistan and war in Iraq.

So there you have it. Who created the debt? Clinton is second-only to Reagan. What's really amazing is that with a growing economy, no costly war, and a tax INCREASE he almost beat Reagan in terms of total deficit spending! And somehow he gets away with supposedly balancing the budget. Hello, McFly??

It is the current administrations fault and their fault alone

See above. You are very far from being right. Yes, there has been deficit spending in the last 2 years. But don't pretend that all our woes have been created by Bush in the last two years. If that's your position it's not even worth discussing it with you as you are clearly out of touch with reality.

Now you get back to work, because you probably wont have a job in 2 years.

I'm self-employed, I'm happy to say. Unless I fire myself I'll be fine.

There is plenty of good US national debt related information available at the Dept. of Treasury's web site. In particular the Bureau of Public Debt is a great starting point, with things like debt history from 1950-2000, which does indeed show that the national debt was never reduced during Clinton's presidency.

These numbers are an aggregate of public debt, and intragovernmental holdings. Apparently, the public debt was actually reduced during Clinton's presidency as shown in the recent statistics page here , but the intragovernmental holdings increased enough to still put the country in the red. So then you ask, what are intragovernmental holdings? Hey! They'll tell you that, too!

Intra Governmental Holdings
Debt Held By the Public

If that's hopeful paper pushing to make the Dems look good, or not, I don't know. Conclusions sure are easy to come by here, though.

There is plenty of good US national debt related information available at the Dept. of Treasury's web site. In particular the Bureau of Public Debt is a great starting point, with things like debt history from 1950-2000, which does indeed show that the national debt was never reduced during Clinton's presidency.

These numbers are an aggregate of public debt, and intragovernmental holdings. Apparently, the public debt was actually reduced during Clinton's presidency as shown in the recent statistics page here , but the intragovernmental holdings increased enough to still put the country in the red. So then you ask, what are intragovernmental holdings? Hey! They'll tell you that, too!

Intra Governmental Holdings
Debt Held By the Public

If that's hopeful paper pushing to make the Dems look good, or not, I don't know. Conclusions sure are easy to come by here, though.

There is plenty of good US national debt related information available at the Dept. of Treasury's web site. In particular the Bureau of Public Debt is a great starting point, with things like debt history from 1950-2000, which does indeed show that the national debt was never reduced during Clinton's presidency.

These numbers are an aggregate of public debt, and intragovernmental holdings. Apparently, the public debt was actually reduced during Clinton's presidency as shown in the recent statistics page here , but the intragovernmental holdings increased enough to still put the country in the red. So then you ask, what are intragovernmental holdings? Hey! They'll tell you that, too!

Intra Governmental Holdings
Debt Held By the Public

If that's hopeful paper pushing to make the Dems look good, or not, I don't know. Conclusions sure are easy to come by here, though.

There is plenty of good US national debt related information available at the Dept. of Treasury's web site. In particular the Bureau of Public Debt is a great starting point, with things like debt history from 1950-2000, which does indeed show that the national debt was never reduced during Clinton's presidency.

These numbers are an aggregate of public debt, and intragovernmental holdings. Apparently, the public debt was actually reduced during Clinton's presidency as shown in the recent statistics page here , but the intragovernmental holdings increased enough to still put the country in the red. So then you ask, what are intragovernmental holdings? Hey! They'll tell you that, too!

Intra Governmental Holdings
Debt Held By the Public

If that's hopeful paper pushing to make the Dems look good, or not, I don't know. Conclusions sure are easy to come by here, though.

There is plenty of good US national debt related information available at the Dept. of Treasury's web site. In particular the Bureau of Public Debt is a great starting point, with things like debt history from 1950-2000, which does indeed show that the national debt was never reduced during Clinton's presidency.

These numbers are an aggregate of public debt, and intragovernmental holdings. Apparently, the public debt was actually reduced during Clinton's presidency as shown in the recent statistics page here , but the intragovernmental holdings increased enough to still put the country in the red. So then you ask, what are intragovernmental holdings? Hey! They'll tell you that, too!

Intra Governmental Holdings
Debt Held By the Public

If that's hopeful paper pushing to make the Dems look good, or not, I don't know. Conclusions sure are easy to come by here, though.

Yep. Have yours been infringed lately? Mine haven't.

Remember budget surpluses?

Not since 1960 when the debt went down by $500 million. Despite urban legend, there was no budget surplus under the Clinton administration. Or if there was I'd like someone to explain where it was spent, because it certainly didn't reduce the debt--which means it wasn't really a surplus.

Remember an economy that was working?

The one that Clinton nuked and then handed off to Bush as he left office?

Remember employment?

Business cycles suck, don't they? This wasn't the first recession and it won't be the last.

Stop YOUR whining and get to work.

Job creation always lags after the beginning of a recovery. Companies have to see the recovery has legs before they start to commit to hiring people. This is nothing new.

Why did we go from a $200B surplus in 2000 to a record $475B deficit this year?

Oh, please. There was never a $200B surplus. The debt increased by $20 billion even in 2000 and grew by $1.6 trillion under Clinton. What you heard about a balanced budget was smoke and mirrors--there was never a surplus as shown by the above U.S. debt web page that shows that the deficit never went down in any year of the Clinton administration.

As for the deficit, that always happens during a recession and the beginning of the subsequent recovery. Until companies are convinced the recovery has legs there are still people that are jobless which are drawing unemployment while not paying taxes on income. Plus we had military action in the wake of 9/11.

But you already knew that...

Ah well, as with most other things, Japan and Europe will lead, and North America will get dragged along eventually, kicking and screaming, bleeding corporate profits all along the way