Ten Trillion and Counting-PBS Frontline 03-24-2009[HDTV]~Ekolb

Description

Ten Trillion and Counting

Now the national debt, which has ballooned to over $10 trillion, may hinder the Obama administration, and why some from
both the right and left believe it must be reduced to ensure the nation s future



All of the federal government's efforts to stem the tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of
dollars to an already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double over the next 10 years to more than $23
trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting, FRONTLINE traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what
some say is a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in comparison.



The journey begins as FRONTLINE correspondent Forrest Sawyer takes viewers to a secret location: the Treasury's debt
auction room, where the U.S. government sells securities backed by the "full faith and credit of the United
States." On this day, the government is auctioning $67 billion of Treasury securities. The money borrowed will be
used to fund services and programs that the government cannot pay for through tax revenues alone.



Observers warn that the United States' reliance on borrowing to fund essential programs is a dangerous gamble. For the
first time, investors are beginning to question the ability of federal government to meet its growing financial
obligations, and fading confidence can have dire consequences. "You might have a situation where there is one day
when the government says we need to sell several billion dollars of bonds, and nobody shows," Economist reporter
Greg Ip tells FRONTLINE. "No money to pay the Social Security checks, no money to give to the states for their
Medicaid programs. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut."



Yet more borrowing is exactly what the Obama administration plans to do: hundreds of billions to bail out the banks and
other financial institutions; tens of billions more for the auto industry; $275 billion for homeowners and mortgage
lenders; and a giant $787 billion stimulus package to jump-start an economy spiraling downward. Just like the Bush
administration before it, Obama and his team are going to borrow big.



"That's the paradox of the situation that we're in now," observes Matt Miller, author of The Tyranny of Dead
Ideas. "Government has got to run big deficits to stimulate the economy, deficits that would have been unthinkable
... because government's the only entity with the wherewithal to prop up a demand in the economy when businesses and
consumers are all pulling back."



Format            : AVI

Length            : 524 MiB for 53mn 31s 920ms

Codec             : XviD

Source            : HDTV



Video #0          : MPEG-4 Visual at 1 250 Kbps

Aspect            : 672 x 384 (1.750) at 29.970 fps



Audio #0          : MPEG Audio at 106 Kbps

Infos             : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz



Enjoy!

Ekolb

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