How could fiscal 2009’s reported Federal Deficit be only $1.42 trillion if Total Debt increased by more than $1.88 trillion?

Date                    9/30/2008                         9/30/2009

 

Value                    $10,024,725,000,000            $11,909,828,000,000

 

 

 

 

How could the national debt have increased

 by considerably more than...the "deficit"?

  

Simple.

  

Just call the money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund

an "intragovernmental transfer,"

and exclude it from the calculation of the deficit.

 

 Corporate managers have gone to jail for less book cooking than that.

  

John Steele Gordon

A Short History of the National Debt

Wall Street Journal