Parabolic Decline

And there's some chance we could fail
But the last time someone was always there for bail
When will, when will we fall down?
--Toad the Wet Sprocket

Nice depiction of the gravity of our fiscal situation. Yes, debt is 'soaring,' but its actual effect is to pull progress downward--as in negative net worth.

btw, if you're wondering what the secret sauce was that brought about a brief reported surplus in the late 1990s, it was a combination of a capital gains tax windfall from the dot.com stock market runup and an accounting change engineered by the Clinton administration to count payroll taxes collected for Social Security as revenue (in reality they are trust payments). The key tell is that debt continued to increase during the 'surplus' period.

The days of smoke and mirrors surpluses are long gone, however, as even the boldest accounting chicanery cannot obscure the parabolic decline in financial position augured by our reckless borrowing behavior.