National debt hits $40 trillion

The US Department of the Treasury building in Washington, DC [Daniel Heuer/Reuters]

Aljazeera has the story, but it raises as many questions as it answers. For example:

Total debt, which includes debt owed to others and what the government owes itself, has doubled since January 2017, when Trump began his first term as president. US debt at the time was $19.95 trillion.

The government owes money to itself? What does that even mean?

Here's the elephant in the room:

The US spends about $7 trillion annually, with about 60 percent of that going to Social Security Administration (SSA) payments, health insurance including Medicare and Medicaid, and veterans’ care.

I have no idea how to fix that.

Public debt borrowed from domestic and foreign investors makes up 80 percent – roughly $32 trillion – of the gross debt, according to Treasury data.

. . . 

Separately, another 20 percent of the gross national debt – about $8 trillion – is owed intra-governmentally and therefore does not affect overall finances.

There we go with 'the government owes money to itself' again. 

I'm still going with ten years until we get hyperinflation and things get really bad.

From a previous post:

But all this fussing about jobs and housing and war is just avoiding the elephant in the room - the umpteen zillion old folks on social security and Medicare. All I can see is that inflation is going to continue to increase. I suspect it might be ten years before the rate starts going up monthly. About then the rate will start going up exponentially and within months we'll be using trillion dollar bank notes to buy groceries. That's when people will start using the Chinese Yen or Crypto-bit strings.