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I wanted to know our national debt, not as a % of our annual GDP, but as a % of the assets owned by the US. This is what Google says: "The financial position o

I wanted to know our national debt, not as a % of our annual GDP, but as a % of the assets owned by the US. This is what Google says: "The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)." Am I confusing government debt vs. private sector debt here?

givemeethekeys 3y ago
Value of debt is pretty straight forward - it's the amount of money owed. Valuing assets is a much more creative exercise. What kind of assets? Are they other country's debt? I might be wrong about this, but most of (all?) the aid given to Ukraine by the US has been in the form of loans. If Ukraine loses, the US may have to write-off a lot of loans that it holds as assets. Similarly, if the US has to sell some of these assets, it'll have to find buyers and the assets during sale may not fetch their paper value. Until we find out, the party goes on!
- PopAlongKid 3y ago
  >What kind of assets? If the U.S. were a private business, standard accounting would count all the federally-owned land (from national parks to post offices), buildings, machinery, vehicles/boats/airplanes, and intangibles such as national databases and various intellectual properties. The valuation of many of these assets starts with what they cost to acquire or create, in some cases decreased by depreciation (but not land). After all, in the past countries such as France and Russia sold huge tracts of land to the U.S. Why someday couldn't the U.S. sell some land, to convert an illiquid asset into a liquid one if necessary? "The federal government owns about 640 million acres (2.6 million km2) of land in the United States, about 28% of the total land"[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands

givemeethekeys 3y ago

Value of debt is pretty straight forward - it's the amount of money owed. Valuing assets is a much more creative exercise. What kind of assets? Are they other country's debt? I might be wrong about this, but most of (all?) the aid given to Ukraine by the US has been in the form of loans. If Ukraine loses, the US may have to write-off a lot of loans that it holds as assets. Similarly, if the US has to sell some of these assets, it'll have to find buyers and the assets during sale may not fetch their paper value. Until we find out, the party goes on!

PopAlongKid 3y ago
>What kind of assets? If the U.S. were a private business, standard accounting would count all the federally-owned land (from national parks to post offices), buildings, machinery, vehicles/boats/airplanes, and intangibles such as national databases and various intellectual properties. The valuation of many of these assets starts with what they cost to acquire or create, in some cases decreased by depreciation (but not land). After all, in the past countries such as France and Russia sold huge tracts of land to the U.S. Why someday couldn't the U.S. sell some land, to convert an illiquid asset into a liquid one if necessary? "The federal government owns about 640 million acres (2.6 million km2) of land in the United States, about 28% of the total land"[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands