History Of The United States Public Debt
In the United States, national debt is money borrowed by the federal government of the United States. Debt burden is usually measured as a ratio of public debt to gross domestic product.
Debt as a share of the US economy reached a maximum during Harry Truman's first presidential term. Public debt as a percentage of GDP fell rapidly in the post-World War II period, and reached a low in 1973 under President Richard Nixon. The debt burden has consistently increased since then, except during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. In recent years sharp increases in deficits and the resulting increases in debt have led to heightened concern about the long-term sustainability of the federal government's fiscal policies.
Read more about History Of The United States Public Debt: Early History, After World War II, Changes in Debt By Political Affiliation, Causes of Recent Changes in Debt, Federal Spending, Federal Debt, and GDP
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, united, states, public and/or debt:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A good debt is not as good as no debt.”
—Chinese proverb.