Posted On: Monday - August 31st 2026 6:08PM MST
In Topics: Music Global Financial Stupidity Economics US Feral Government
Peak Stupidity has written about The Eleven many a time. That has been The Number of illegal aliens in the US this century. It's not even a round number, and it has more precision than it should based on known accuracy, but my real problem with it is it's been ridiculously low, based on simple influx - outflux over this whole quarter century. My guess is the number is 40 - 50 million, not quite the 100 million that "Commander" Greg Bovino has it pegged at, but at least he DOES have a nice round number!
The 40 Trillion is not a count of people but of US dollars owed by the Feral Gov't to its lenders, the Treasury Bond holders.* It's a pretty good round number, one I'd expected we'd hit in early October. Why early October, you may ask? We did a simple estimate a couple of months ago based on the numbers on the the US Debt Clock site.
Peak Stupidity has linked to that site before. The value of the US National debt is much easier to come up with than that prior (even more!) important number. We will not get into why this debt is "unexpectedly" becoming a real problem for America's finances, as we've been through this ad near infinitum.
That US Debt Clock site has all the US (and State/Local) revenue/expenditures/deficit/debt numbers we could possibly ask for**, precise to the nearest dollar, were your mind able to distinguish one microsecond from the next. The accuracy is probably good, as one of the jobs, the least it could do, of the Feral Gov't is to tell us how much money is being wasted and how quickly. It's not the numbers with 10-14 significant digits that makes the site useful but that the numbers turn over in some sort of real time so that the scale of the changes is evident to anyone.
What I did was use a stopwatch to time the debt number to the precise nearest million over 10 minutes. The less than half a second errors in the mashing of start/stop compared to 10 minutes meant I had a fairly precise number to extrapolate with. It told me I should set a mental note to get back on in early October and them maybe get a chance to take a screenshot with $40 and lots of zeroes, maybe to the nearest 10 million, chump change in the scheme of things here.
Ooops, I started reading about the 40 Trillion over a week ago. It was like missing a Lunar Eclipse! Luckily I was not in the shape Christopher Columbus' crew would have been in, stranded on his 4th voyage (see that post) had he no Astronomical Ephemeris book onboard.
My assumption was that USDebtClock used some large-time-scale numbers, the big spending bills, the average monthly tax receipts, etc, such that my estimate would get me close enough to a time when I'd start viewing the site much more regularly and then home in to capture a screenshot within seconds of the Big Four Oh. I guess they got a few big receipts in, or last month businesses got fed up and started cheating on their taxes harder.
I don't know. I was WAY off, so I missed it. Dang! I compared this to missing a Lunar Eclipse because they aren't rare at all like solar eclipses are. Nah, I just looked. I'm no professional Astronomer (though I used to dabble in it) but I calculated that sometime late this evening, barring too much cloud cover, we could see the debt owed flip to $40.1 Trillion. $50 Trillion, a REALLY nice round number, is just around the corner. I'll go find my eclipse glasses and possibly buy a case of Corona... I mean, no, this won't likely coincide with a Solar Eclipse, but who knows if a nuke will get set off, what with the political turmoil that that comes with the world's loss of confidence in that almighty US Dollar.
It's probably again time for Coldplay, come to think of it. Clocks is a great song!
I like the bit where singer Chris Martin starts a new sentence at the end of each musical line. Considered in the Alternative Rock and Psychedelic Rock genres, this 24 y/o song is from Coldplay's 2nd album A Rush of Blood to the Head..
Coldplay was:
Chris Martin – lead vocals, piano, keyboards, guitars.
Jonny Buckland – guitars, keyboards, backing vocals.
Guy Berryman – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals.
Will Champion – drums, percussion, piano, backing vocals.
* I know it's quite a bit more complicated than that, but I don't care about the financial shenanigans. That's debt.
** There are just over 100 different values in US dollars rolling by on the front page alone, and there's also a menu at the bottom that can steer you to more "clocks". How much time have you got?
Comments:
The Alarmist
Tuesday - September 1st 2026 7:14AM MST
PS
The debt rolls at its nominal issue value … it doesn’t re-price with rate changes. Things get worse when Bessent borrows $1T on the short end to buy $1.6T of debt on the long end at its market value of $1T … if the holders bought at par, they still take the loss, they just don’t have to participate in further losses as rates rise. Meanwhile, Treasury gets to keep rolling that $1T at its full value. Dude might have helped Jabba the Soros break the BoE, but didn’t seem to learn much in the process.
The debt rolls at its nominal issue value … it doesn’t re-price with rate changes. Things get worse when Bessent borrows $1T on the short end to buy $1.6T of debt on the long end at its market value of $1T … if the holders bought at par, they still take the loss, they just don’t have to participate in further losses as rates rise. Meanwhile, Treasury gets to keep rolling that $1T at its full value. Dude might have helped Jabba the Soros break the BoE, but didn’t seem to learn much in the process.
Moderator
Tuesday - September 1st 2026 5:26AM MST
PS: Oh, yeah, if you include children of illegal entrants of all types, then, sure, you could get to that 100 million.
I didn't want to make the post too long, or I'd have mentioned the more comprehensive amount of debt, said to be something like 5 times this much, unfunded pension plans, household debt, etc. Then, I am told about 1/3 of that $40 Trillion is intragovernment holdings or something, so that it shouldn't count. OK, but $40 Trillion isn't a magic number. If interest rates get to more normal levels, the interest on $25 Trillion will still make it all "unsustainable".
I didn't want to make the post too long, or I'd have mentioned the more comprehensive amount of debt, said to be something like 5 times this much, unfunded pension plans, household debt, etc. Then, I am told about 1/3 of that $40 Trillion is intragovernment holdings or something, so that it shouldn't count. OK, but $40 Trillion isn't a magic number. If interest rates get to more normal levels, the interest on $25 Trillion will still make it all "unsustainable".
The Alarmist
Tuesday - September 1st 2026 1:22AM MST
PS
The “eleven” is easily “seventy.” I can imagine it is actually over 100m, especially if “birthright” citizenship is properly categorized.
The US passed $40 trillion a while back, but the failure to properly account for borrowing from the “lockbox” hides that reality, much like how the US is only at 125% of debt to gdp.
🕉
The “eleven” is easily “seventy.” I can imagine it is actually over 100m, especially if “birthright” citizenship is properly categorized.
The US passed $40 trillion a while back, but the failure to properly account for borrowing from the “lockbox” hides that reality, much like how the US is only at 125% of debt to gdp.
🕉
Yet, aren't there 5-year bonds and loads of others getting redeemed on a pretty much consistent basis, with new bonds bought in their place (with the new rate)? So, I can see.a lag time, of course, as, say, the average 2-year bond is 1 year into its term, depending on how things have been going in the various markets.
I don't think I can understand the rest without some more detailed examples from you, Alarmist. I do get that it's the bondholders taking the loss, and, yeah, that's a disincentive for staying in the market for US Treasuries.
Yeah, Bessent was big with Soros. That's not a good thing. First I learned about him, though, was when he made the scorpions remark when discussing the corrupt Somalians of Minnesota.
I've got the video in my post about Scott Bessent below.
"Scott Bessent on the Somalian Scorpions"
https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=3429