U.S. Budget and Economy

Analyzing the Federal Debt with Online Tools and Shiny On March 13, 2026, Yahoo Finance posted an article from Fortune Magazine titled "The national debt isn't $39 trillion. One economist says it's actually $100 trillion" . The article begins: The U.S. national debt is nearly $39 trillion. One of the country's top fiscal economists says the real number is closer to $100 trillion - and that Washington's own accounting rules are designed to hide it. The $39 trillion figure can be verified on the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) website at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN . On March 14, it displayed the following graph: As cam be seem. the federal debt is nearly $39 trillion dollars. Further on, the article states: If the U.S. government were required to report its finances under the same accounting rules as a publicly traded corporation, Smetters pointed out, the debt-to-GDP ratio wouldn't be the current level of 100%, which is bad e...