The Federal Government’s tidal wave of debt now exceeds $12 trillion dollars. We have plummeted an additional trillion dollars in the last 8 months.

Twelve trillion is twelve followed by 12 zeros: 12,000,000,000,000 or 12 x 10¹² . 12 trillion eggs would weigh just over 13 million tons or the weight of 19 supertankers.  That works out to 149 dozen eggs for each of the 6.6 billion humans on this planet.  12 trillion gallons of milk could easily fill Lake Superior almost four times over.

Twelve trillion is so vast a super number that only astrophysicists and molecular geneticists should be allowed to calculate with it, not the bureaucrats in Washington.  In 2008, twelve trillion is equal to the combined output (GDP) of China, Japan and the UK. The total GDP of the United States in the third quarter of 2009 was $14.3 trillion.

Every day, each of our 1.9 million, non-military, Federal employees are happily administering the distribution of this debt to the tune of $2,995.

Each American household’s share of this debt is $103,000. Does anyone honestly foresee our taxes being raised enough to pay off this massive deficit?

The Federal Government, of course, pays interest on its $12 trillion debt. How much interest was paid last year? A staggering $383 billion dollars was incurred during the last fiscal year. That compares to NASA’s budget of $18 billion, the Department of Transportation’s budget of  $74 billion, and the California state budget of $90 billion. $383 billion in annual interest could purchase four thousands homes a day in the high priced California market. That same sum is a 1,000 times greater then the distance from Earth to Jupiter in miles.

The annual interest on this debt for each household is thirty-three hundred dollars a year, or $9 a day.

If each household in America were to take a thirty year fully amortized mortgage at 5.0% on their share of the $12 trillion dollar debt, their monthly payment would be $556 a month or $6,572 a year ---- for thirty years!

All these mind numbing numbers begs three fundamental questions. Who is going to end up paying for this tsunami of debt? Are there politicians willing to tax us enough to pay off this deficit?  (Yes!) What’s the threshold where taxpayers refuse to be taxed further, even with the threat of jail or loss of property? We may be finding out these answers within the next few months.