The Federal government is openly lying about the size of its own National Debt:
The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government's official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but that the federal government's debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month.
The FMS said that the deficit went up $98 billion ($97,594,000,000) in the Monthly Treasury Statment for July, which it released on Monday.
At the same time, the FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day. The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress.
For those of you who are a little ignorant in financial matters, basically the Federal government is overspending, which means they have to borrow money to do so, and not saying that their total debts have gone up. The equivalent is an individual who maxes out his or her credit cards then denies that they are maxed out.
This is why I don't trust the Federal government to report economic data. There is no compelling reason for politicians or bureaucrats, whose jobs are dependent on good economic news, to properly report it. When the economic news is "bad", it is probably much worse since they know that reporting good economic news would probably be seen as a lie. So they "spin" the data to make it look like things are "bad" but not as they really are.
Did you know, for instance, that the CPI-U, the number used to calculate the price inflation rate, will purposely exclude the prices of food, fuel, and housing because it is too volatile. So gasoline prices could skyrocket and the inflation rate could still be 3% or 4%.
This story serves as another example of how the government lies. What they are lying about and why they are lying is really what you should investigate, given that the stated premise of the previous sentence.