Total US debt load will surpass (not including unfunded liabilities):

• $17 trillion on June 10, 2013;
• $18 trillion on March 23, 2014;
• $19 trillion on January 3, 2015; and
• $20 trillion on October 16, 2015

But hey, at this point, we're so used to hearing those numbers tossed around like fluff... "million," "billion," "trillion"...

Who can even grasp how much that is or what that really means to our economy?

How much is $16 trillion anyway? Is it possible to ever pay off this debt?

These are the questions I've been asking myself for the past several years, and recently I found an outstanding video from Tony Robbins who has the exact same questions I do, and who actually answered them in a great little video in simple, easy-to-understand human terms!

(Imagine that!)

I highly recommend you watch the video if you have the time (it's less than 20 minutes), but in case you are time constrained (like me!), I'll net it out for you below, because I found it very helpful in framing the problem that we are facing here in the US (and just how massive a problem it is).

How on earth do you envision a number like a billion or a trillion?

Well, you have to convert it to something we can relate to, like seconds.

How long ago was a million seconds?

What do YOU think?

Was it a day ago? A week ago? A year ago? 10 years ago?

1,000,000 seconds was 12 days ago.

How about a billion seconds?

(Kung Fu Girl, again clueless... maybe several years?)

A billion seconds was 32 years ago.

That was back in 1980, when Carter was president, The Empire Strikes Back was in the box office, and yours truly had big '80s hair and used way too much Aqua Net.

Just look at that comparison for a minute, a million vs. a billion... that's 12 days vs. 32 years, a huge difference.

But the number we hear thrown around by politicians today isn't a million or a billion... it's TRILLIONS.

And as I said above, our debt just passed $16 TRILLION yesterday!

So how long ago would a trillion seconds have been?

500 years? 1,000 years?

A trillion seconds was... just short of 32,000 years ago!

That's back in the day when man wasn't even known as MAN... we were homo sapiens, Neanderthals, to be exact!

The second from the right... Homo neanderthalensis.

I don't know about you, but that certainly helps put it into perspective for me.

32,000 years ago, a trillion seconds, was a very, very long time ago.

And, if you earned a million dollars every single day of your life and you started in the year of Jesus Christ's birth, making a million dollars every single day up to 2012, you would not even be close to earning a trillion dollars.

It would take you almost 1,000 years to earn a trillion dollars!

And that's just ONE trillion...

But our national debt just passed $16 trillion (and that's not counting the $117 trillion of unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security!).

Tony's team built on the work of Iowahawk, updating all of the US budget numbers for 2012, to attempt to answer the question:

"Just how are we going to pay for all of this debt?"

Because in 2012 alone, President Obama and Congress plan to spend $3.79 trillion.

That is $10.4 billion a day that we have to live on, and we borrow more than $4 billion of that each day just to stay afloat (40%).

So, what should we do?

Well, Tony and Iowahawk suggest we start with two of the biggest and therefore "most evil" corporations in America, Exxon Mobil and Walmart, and take every single penny of their combined 2011 global profits. No one will have a problem with that, right, because these "evil corporations" should pay!

That number is $46.7 billion, which gets us from midnight on January 1, 2012 to 12:45 PM on January 5th.

That's ALL the global profits from two of the largest corporations in the world, and yet we've barely funded the government a few days.

Well, what about the other 498 companies on the Fortune 500... why don't we take all of their profits, too?

That gets us $567 billion, and to 12:15 AM on February 29th.

Unfortunately, that's nowhere near where we need to be, and is only a few weeks after the Super Bowl.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, and all of that awful corporate advertising, let's grab that too - all corporate advertising from 2011 gives us another $200 million and runs the country for another...

28 minutes.

Hmm.

Not even a dent.

Well, let's take ALL of the 46 years' worth of Super Bowl ads - that ought to be huge!

And it is... that's $5.2 billion, which brings us to...

12:15 PM on the same day, February 29th.

OK. Obviously we need to do more - these Fortune 500 corporations and their advertising are simply not doing the trick.

So, let's really do it. Let's soak those rich people.

We can start with athletes... everyone knows they are wildly overpaid anyway and add no value to the world (kidding...), so let's take all of the salaries of everyone in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, the PGA Tour and NASCAR. Not their endorsements but their salaries, total $10.1 billion.

(Remember, it takes $10.4 billion to fund the country every day.)

That gets us to...

11:35 PM on the next day, March 1st.

Well, what about the really rich people?

Let's take 100% of every penny of everyone who makes above $250,000 per year.

According to the 2010 census, there are 2.35 million households that make more than $250K per year, and the total income from all of those households is $1.363 trillion.

Now we're talking!

So let's just eat them and take everything that everyone makes over $250,000 a year, and see where that gets us...

To 1 PM on July 10th.

Hmmm.

We've taxed the richest people and the richest corporations, and we're barely halfway through one year - we're going to have to start cutting spending somewhere.

But where to start?

Well, let's stop spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... I'm sure a lot of people would like to see that happen!

Let's stop spending on that tomorrow and bring everybody home, and that will save us $117 billion, which is enough to get us to 8 PM on July 21st.

Well, shoot... that's only 11 more days!

But who else can we tax who's living too well? We still need more money!

Well, Iowahawk says, screw you, Star Wars (yes, THAT Star Wars...) we're going to take every penny you've ever made from movies, toys, lunchboxes, the whole shebang!

$26.6 billion... not too shabby!

It took you 35 years to come up with $26.6 billion, so we will implement a retroactive tax and take it all, which will bring us to...

9:20 AM on July 24th.

And speaking of those fancy Hollywood people... we've already taken all of their money, but why don't we evict everyone in Beverly Hills!

We'll confiscate their homes and sell them all at market value and take all of their sales proceeds. That will bring us another $48 billion, which is enough to get us to...

July 29th.

Damn... we're still only in JULY.

This is still not working. What else can we do?

Michael Moore assures us there is plenty of money out there, all tied up with the rich...

Let's see...those well-known billionaires, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, are worth $100 billion between them.

Maybe it's time for an "accidental fall down the stairs"...? The inheritance tax will then allow us to keep half of that, $50 billion, and that will bring us to...

7 PM on August 2nd.

But let's get serious, there are 398 more billionaires, according to the Forbes 400, with a combined total net worth of $1.4 trillion!

Let's just kill them all off and take 50% of their estate! That's another $700 billion, which brings us to:

2 AM on October 9th.

At least we've made it to autumn!

But forget this 50% stuff... heck, let's just take all of their money, plus that of the hundred or so other "almost billionaires," which buys us another 32 days, to:

12:30 AM on November 10th.

That's the start of the holiday season, so let's get our Grinch on... let's confiscate all of the proceeds from all of the expected holiday sales!

That's $469 billion, which brings us to:

12:55 PM on December 25th.

Merry Christmas! We're almost there...

And remember, this money is for America's poor, so let's get rid of all foreign aid, the dying-children aid, those things we're trying to make a difference with... let's keep it all for ourselves!

That will bring us another $53.3 billion and take us to...

3:55 PM on December 30th.

We STILL have a day and change to pay for.

So, in order to cover the remaining $13.8 billion, let's hit up every single man, woman and child in America (that's 311 million people) for $44 each, to pay up.

Finally, at 12:00 AM, January 1, 2013, we have made it.

Happy New Year.

But what happens next?

We've already taken all of the profits, all of the salaries, all of the assets and all of the revenues and holdings of the rich and of their corporations, and we've liquidated them.

We have destroyed all advertising revenue, professional sports, movie stars, etc... and we have scraped through for only ONE year.

We have killed off the golden goose... there are no more golden eggs. No more profits or revenues available to tax.

Meanwhile, President Obama and Congress are proposing to spend another $3.8 trillion in 2013.

How are we going to pay for that?

Besides having a firmer grasp of the utter gargantuan-ness of these numbers, I hope you understand just how much we need to sacrifice to bring our debt under control... and how much the politicians are not talking about this, on either side, at least in any frame of reference that will actually make a difference.

Because despite the somewhat rosy revision of today's GDP report (hey, we can grow our way out of this, right? And avoid all of those tough decisions!), we have a real fiscal solvency problem on our hands.

This matters to you as an investor.

I dearly hope you're not investing in Treasury bonds (we talked about how to short those a few QnA's ago...), and I hope you can see that rampant inflation looms not far in the future (although we may see a brief deflation first, depending on Europe).

Unfortunately, our investment decisions can no longer be made based solely on market or asset fundamentals... we truly do live in a politicized economy.

I hope this helped you understand these crazy numbers and our debt a little better.

To your financial success,

David Galland