The federal government ran up more new debt during the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to the U.S. Treasury.

As of Dec. 28, the national debt had risen by $3.22 trillion during that Democratic-controlled Congress — equal to more than $10,429 for each person counted in the 2010 Census.

The total debt stood at $13.85 trillion on that date, or about $44,890 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The new accumulated debt shattered the record set by the previous 100th Congress, which adjourned on Jan. 4, 2009 — $1.95 trillion.

While Democrats controlled the House and Senate in both of those Congresses, the two previous, Republican-controlled Congresses each added more than $1 trillion to the national debt.

The overall federal debt did not reach the $3.22 trillion figure until September 1990, during the 101st Congress, CNSNews reported.

Since Nancy Pelosi assumed her post as speaker of the House on Jan. 4, 2007, the national debt has ballooned by $5.17 trillion.

Yet during her inaugural address as speaker, Pelosi had vowed that under the 100th Congress the government would not burden future generations “with mountains of debt.”

She said: “After years of historic deficits, this 100th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: Pay as you go, no new deficit spending.”

Updated 1/4/2011

"Will the Euro Survive the EuroZone Debt Crisis?"

The real problem is that Germany retains a semblance of a free-market economy and the fear of creating a EU, back to the 1950s, was that an economically strong Germany would dominate the EU, winning for Germans dominance over Europe that even Hitler failed to achieve long-term.

 

Moreover, many of the EU countries, including even France and Italy, have constructed elaborate social welfare states on a socialist model that are now spending wildly beyond the ability of tax revenues to keep pace; as a result, irreversible budget deficits mean inevitable downgrades in sovereign debt ratings, with the result that the cost of continued borrowing is not affordable.

 

While the Wall Street Journal still considers the breakup of the EuroZone unlikely, what is remarkable is that an article like the one Marcus Walker wrote could be published in the newspaper at all, especially with the title "Extreme Measures: The Euro Breaks Up."

 

ECB builds up war chest!

 

Last week the European Central Bank announced: it will double its capital base, to €10.8 billion ($14.28 billion) from €5.8 billion, in preparation to enter the government bond market even more deeply, in an effort to work alongside the International Monetary Fund to help bailout member states with severe budget deficits, including Greece and Ireland, and not potentially Spain, Portugal and Belgium.

 

Source: http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703395204576023420619887858.html

 

Last Thursday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF, said he was worried that the EU leaders' piecemeal approach to the EuroZone debt crisis was encouraging markets to pick off weak countries one-by-one.

 

"I am worried, and that's why I'm urging the Europeans ... to provide a comprehensive solution because this piecemeal approach ... obviously doesn't work," Strauss-Kahn told Reuters. "The markets are just waiting for what's next."

 

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6BF45I20101217

 

What is becoming obvious in the European Union is that economies of radically different strengths have been combined in one 16-nation euro currency zone. What is being tested is whether on one set of economic policies determined by bureaucrats in Brussels and Luxembourg and one set of interest rates determined by the EU central bank can possibly result in economic prosperity for all 16 nations during difficult economic times.

 

Signs of fracture in the EuroZone

 

An important editorial written by economics commentator Philip Stephens in the Financial Times on Friday, Dec. 3, began by noting, "The crisis of the euro is a crisis of Europe. The continent is slipping into a new nationalism."

 

He argued that as the shift of global power is moving to Asia and China, European leaders are scrambling "to define narrow national interests."

 

Stephens continued: "Solidarity, set by the Union's founding fathers as the cornerstone of Europe's future, is an idea fallen into despair."

 

He observed that it is no longer fanciful "to imagine that this unique experiment in supranational governance could yet rupture. The proximate cause of such an event would probably be another economic shock. Yet the underlying malaise is politics. Governments, struggling to hold on to support at home, cannot adjust to a world that no longer belongs to the west."

 

What's remarkable is to see openly expressed concerns that the eurozone might not survive, especially when published in the Financial Times, a stalwart supporter of the EU and globalism.

 

"I become nervous when Angela Merkel says the future of the euro and that of the EU are inextricably linked," Stephens wrote. "The problem is that she is right. The EU as we know it would not long survive the implosion of its most ambitious project. What worries me is that, on the evidence so far, Berlin does not have the political will to rescue the single currency."

 

What is becoming obvious in the European Union is that economies of radically different strengths have been combined in one 16-nation euro currency zone. What is being tested is whether on one set of economic policies determined by bureaucrats in Brussels and Luxembourg and one set of interest rates determined by the EU central bank can possibly result in economic prosperity for all 16 nations during difficult economic times.

 

The EU as a "Great Deception"

 

The duplicity behind the formation of the EU was revealed in an unusually honest editorial that columnist Gideon Rachman published last week in the Financial Times.

 

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c5aadd7e-1fe7-11df-8deb-00144feab49a.html

 

"The EU has always proceeded by creating economic 'facts on the ground,' which were intended to trigger political events," Rachman wrote. "Ever since the 1950s this has worked admirably, as a modest coal and steel community turned into a Union of 27 nations, with its own parliament, supreme court and foreign policy."

 

This is startling for those who recall Christopher Booker and Richard North's important book, "The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union," 1-3 in which the authors argued that lying was an important strategy used by the globalists behind the formation of the EU. Source:http://www.amazon.com/Great-Deception-Secret-History-European/dp/082647652X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid =1267207024&sr=

 

For decades, globalists such as Jean Monnet, a key architect of the EU, argued that economic integration did not necessitate political integration or loss of nation-state sovereignty for the European countries participating.

 

"Jacques Delors, the European Commission president who presided over the creation of a single market in the 1980s, said frankly: 'We're not here just to make a single market - that doesn't interest me - but to make a political union,'" Rachman noted. "The creation of a single market involved a huge expansion of European law and therefore deep erosions of national sovereignty."

 

What has happened is that globalist pundits, in their determination to use the current EU debt crisis as an excuse for more globalism - have begun to blame the failure of the EU on the drive to create a common currency in the euro before the EU political mechanism had complete control over the nation-state economies of the participating countries.

 

Now that the IMF has partnered with the EU on the Greece and Ireland bailouts, the EU itself is transitioning to global control, with or without the informed consent of the citizens of the EU nations.