The U.S. Government Is Actually at Least $70 Trillion in Debt.

The Falsity, Even Insanity, of Libertarianism (Neoliberalism)

21 July 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

A false ideology has driven the U.S. Government to systematically under-report its net indebtedness in order to be able to continue its defrauding the individuals and entities that trust it to repay its existing financial obligations.

The core of libertarianism (neoliberalism, as it’s called in Europe) is (as will be documented in the links here) the false and even insane idea that privatization is better than socialization; but the empirical truth is that in many instances, socialization is far better than privatization (and libertarians-neoliberals cannot accept that fact, because it would destroy their con).

Privatization is the selling of governmental (publicly owned and controlled) assets to private investors. Socialization is the buying of assets, from private individuals, by the government.

Norway presents an excellent case-example of this falsity, even insanity, of (America’s ideology) libertarianism-neoliberalism, which ideology doesn’t drive Norway’s Government.

Here is a video that explains this fact (the vast economic harm that is produced by libertarianism-neoliberalism) in regard to Norway’s having socialized (instead of sold off to investors) its oil assets — and this prominent example (of the enormous benefits that Norwegians derive from that socialization of their oil-wealth) is devastating to libertarianism-neoliberalism:

visionaryyminds

A post shared by @visionaryyminds

Here is its transcript, which describes the history of Norway’s state-owned oil company, Equinor (formerly called “Statoil”):

Norway discovered oil in the North Sea in 1969. Most countries would blow it on corruption, debt, and short-term wins. Norway did the opposite. It turned oil into long-term national wealth. Here’s how it became one of the richest countries on Earth.

In the 1960s, Norway was a quiet, modest, country. Known for fishing, farming, and shipping, its economy was steady, but not wealthy. There was no sign it would one day lead the world in wealth per person.

Then in 1969, oil was discovered in the North Sea. Suddenly, Norway had access to massive natural wealth. It was a turning point, one that could’ve gone very wrong.

Many countries that discover oil fall into what’s called the “resource curse.” They overspend. Corruption spreads. Other industries collapse. Oil becomes a blessing, then a trap. [THAT’S THE LIBERTARIAN WAY — PRIVATIZATION.]

But Norway didn’t let that happen. Instead of handing the oil to private companies, it took control. [IT SOCIALIZED THAT ASSET.]

The Government created a national oil company, Statoil, to manage resources for the people.

Norway also made sure oil profits didn’t distort the economy.

It saved most of the money, and refused to spend it all at once [on privatization’s institutionalization of corruptness].

The goal wasn’t fast growth. It was long-term strength [for the public].

In 1990, Norway launched the Government Pension Fund Global. Also known as the Oil Fund. It was designed to turn oil profits into steady income for future generations.

The plan was simple: Invest the oil money in global stocks, bonds, and real estate. Never touch the core savings, only spend a small part of the returns.

That discipline paid off. Today, the fund is worth more than 1.6 trillion dollars. It’s the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. [AS-OF NOW — July 2025 — IT IS WORTH AROUND $1.7T.]

The fund owns shares in over 9,000 companies across the globe. It holds stakes in Apple, Amazon, Nestle, Microsoft, and more. Norway earns money every time those companies grow.

And the Government can use only a small part of the returns each year, around 3 percent. That rule protects the fund from political misuse and reckless spending.

Transparency is key. Every Norwegian can look up exactly where the money is invested. This builds public trust and prevents corruption [such as controls countries like America].

The oil will run out one day. But the wealth won’t. Norway turned a temporary resource into a permanent financial engine.

It used oil not to get rich fast, but to stay rich for generations. With world-class healthcare, education, and low poverty, Norway shows what’s possible with smart [and honestly NOT psychopathic like America is] policy and long-term [NOT “me me me, now now now”] thinking.

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America’s public debt (including not only the official amount of $36,655,280,579,113.61 but also Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Medicare, and Social Security, all of which are likewise financial obligations of the federal Government: $5T, and $45.8T) totals actually to $87.5T in U.S. Government debt). Per person, that is $87.5T/340 million people, or $257,243 debt per person. (Or: for America’s 253,681,000 adults = -$211,496 per adult.) The median (average) U.S. adult has a net worth exclusive of Governmental obligations, of $112,157. Less that $211,496 (Governmental obligations), this indicates that the total net worth of the average American is -$99,340 — half of Americans are richer, half are poorer, than minus $99,340. America is a nation of predominantly highly negative net-wealth people. (The U.S. Government hides it by enormously underestimating its indebtedness, but this is the fact.)

By contrast, Norway’s public debt per person is non-existent.

Back again to the Governmental level: Norway is one of the few countries that has a “positive net asset position” — owns more than it owes. It currently stands at +$1.5T. America is currently at -$19.9T (the world's most indebted Government), according to the official figures. The only countries doing better than Norway are China +$2.9T, Japan +$3.3T, and Germany +$3.3T. (Germany, however, is expected to plunge, because of the U.S. Government.) (Russia was not included in those numbers, because of the dubious legality of The West’s seizure of Russia’s sovereign foreign assets, which makes impossible to estimate such numbers for Russia.)

Chapter 20 of the libertarian U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s 2019 book The Case Against Socialism is titled “Hitler Was a Socialist.” Chapter 22 is “The Nazis Didn’t Believe in Private Property.” Rand Paul displays there that he is ignorant of history and writes falsehoods about it. The name Germa Bel isn’t even referred-to in that 354-page book. But as that great social scientist and economic historian Bel has documented in two classic papers, Mussolini carried out the first privatization of governmental assets; and Hitler carried out the second one. So, the fascists actually invented privatization — they were the original ‘libertarians’ or ‘neoliberals’. Furthermore, Tom Perrett, on 23 October 2019, the same year as Dr. Paul’s book, headlined “From Hayek to Hitler: An analysis of the Libertarian to Fascist Pipeline”, and he showed that privatization was hardly an anomaly, because fascism and libertarianism are actually the same, and only the name was changed after WW2 in order to continue on without the opprobrium of having been the losing side in WW2. That name for it, “libertarianism,” was just a PR trick. It’s actually only increasing liberty for the super-rich, at everyone else’s expense. (And in order to do that, the system is rigged so that only the super-rich are on the receiving end of the net-benefits; everybody else is on the paying end — paying that to the super-rich, under a libertarian-neoliberal-fascist Government.)

America is the world’s most libertarian (neoliberal) country. Not only because it is the main practitioner of privatization, but because the basic principle of libertarianism is that an individual’s worth is that person’s net worth (wealth). Consequently, America is run by and for its billionaires. (Click onto that to see the documentation.)

On June 24th, Forbes headlined “Millionaires Are On The Move — Here Are The Countries Winning And Losing Wealthy Residents”, and reported that the biggest number of millionaires and billionaires that are relocating their assets from one country to another was into UAE (because it has no taxes), and the second-biggest was into America (because of its low wages, low unionization, low regulations, low enforcement of regulations of corporations, and especially low taxes for billionaires — in other words, because of its libertarianism), and that Trump has initiated a new program (paid for by U.S. taxpayers) to increase that immigration and investment by foreign millionaires and billionaires. He, being a billionaire himself, wants to increase the number of rich people moving into America, just as he wants to decrease the number of poor people moving into America.

As regards to Norway: social services, such as health care and education, have lower per-capita costs and higher effectiveness (such as higher life-expectancy) in Norway than in America.

The super-rich in America control not only their corporations (profit and ‘non’-profit) but their Government. Apparently, that isn’t the case in Norway — at least not to the same extreme extent.

Back on 21 July 2022, qz dot com headlined “The US government has about $70 trillion in off-balance sheet liabilities” and reported that “a new working paper by University of California-San Diego economics professor James Hamilton estimates that the US was on the hook for more than $70 trillion in off-balance sheet liabilities at the end of 2012.” The incompetently reported qz article blithely said “if the US really doesn’t have the money to pay for all of the Social Security benefits retirees are entitled to in a few decades, those benefits could be trimmed then, or other alterations could be made to the program — such as pushing the retirement age back, which would cut the costs of the program.” It didn’t even consider that instead the owners of U.S. Treasury bonds (far fewer and far wealthier individuals than Social Security recipients) would take a haircut — but blithely proposed that the problem could be solved by hitting the general public instead (something far likelier to provoke a very violent Second American Revolution). The pro-rich anti-public mindset of qz dot com was obvious there: it says that the middle class and poor should be hit with the losses — the rich and especially super-rich should not. Furthermore, their article failed to mention the title of the alleged paper that it claimed to be summarizing, and the link it provided to the paper was to the National Bureau of Economic Research site and said only “Page Not Found”. Had he been pressured, perhaps by the FBI, to remove his paper? So, at around noon on July 20th I emailed Dr. Hamilton to please see his paper. I didn’t hear back from him, but finally found the paper on my own: “OFF-BALANCE-SHEET FEDERAL LIABILITIES”. Its summary or ”Abstract” points out that “The five major categories surveyed include support for housing, other loan guarantees, deposit insurance, actions taken by the Federal Reserve, and government trust funds [Social Security and Medicare]. The total dollar value of notional off-balance-sheet commitments came to $70 trillion as of 2012, or 6 times the size of the reported on-balance-sheet debt.” The paper is outstanding, a real classic, which ought to have (but did not) received headline attention throughout the U.S. press (and from other academics), because of the Governmental lies that it documents, regarding the U.S. Government’s basically bail-out of investors (really of the super-rich) after the 2008 financial crash. (The “little people” got crushed.) Large portions of the U.S. Government’s current debt are comprised of those bailouts of the wealthy. No billionaire or top executive was prosecuted for any of it. At a private meeting with Wall Street bigs (the individuals who had made huge fortunes off of those fraudulently-represented-to-investors mortgage-backed securities) on 27 March 2009, Obama told them “I’m protecting you” from “the pitchforks” and “I’m going to shield you”; and he did exactly that (and so did the press). None of them was prosecuted.

It is by now clear that a new international agency, which will be entirely independent of the U.S. Government (and run perhaps by the BRICS organization) needs to be created to audit each nation’s financial records and issue their creditworthiness-ratings on that basis.

Either we are heading into revolutions, or we are heading into a WW3 if the U.S. refuses to give up its hegemonic position (which is based on such lies) (and which hegemony is essential to hundreds of coups, invasions and even the genocide in Gaza). No matter how violent revolutions would be, a Third World War would be vastly more so. A Second American Revolution is therefore a necessity now. The problem is the U.S. Government, which has been built on lies ever since it started the Cold War on 25 July 1945. That decision produced America’s military-industrial complex, which has been built up ever since then and now consumes more than half of all congressionally authorized federal spending each and every year, dwarfing all other purposes. (And the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department is by far the most corrupt of all Departments of the U.S. Government.) That dominance of the military is entirely consistent with an extremely libertarian-neoliberal-fascist Government — which IS the problem. It is the world’s problem.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.