The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence. The numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025.
Importantly, the $47.78 trillion in reported liabilities does not include the unfunded obligations of social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare — those are disclosed separately in the off-balance-sheet Statement of Social Insurance (SOSI).
The government’s consolidated balance sheet position, excluding the SOSI, deteriorated by nearly $2.07 trillion between FY 2024 and FY 2025, reaching a staggering negative $41.72 trillion. Total liabilities are now nearly eight times the value of reported assets. The largest drivers were a $2 trillion increase in federal debt and interest payable (now $30.33 trillion) and a $438.8 billion increase in federal employee and veteran benefits payable (now $15.47 trillion).
I once went on a half-day public sector ‘Finance For Non-Finance Staff’ course where the presenter stated that while we had to be “businesslike” in our day-to-day dealings we were really “not like a business” in any fundamental sense. When you’re the world’s largest economy (at least for now) with the freedom to raise taxes and change the law and exert remarkable influence over all the world’s other economies how much does your solvency on paper actually matter ? (I really don’t know the answer to that question.) 6tn assets, 50tn liabilities, changes of a few tn between FY24 and FY25 sounds like things are getting ‘worse’ but they haven’t gone from solvent to insolvent in a couple of years.
Dunno about silver but if I were young and had the spare money (that’s ‘spare’ once I’d paid for necessities and some fun) I’d be buying gold for the longer term. We’ve been searching for it for thousands of years and there are unlikely to be any new ‘surprise’ sources out there, plus it’s really important.
Agree, based on either being lucky enough to have bought it 12-18 mths ago, or wait for the current Trump driven ballooning of prices to ease off a bit.
Presumably the tech firms will appeal this all the way to the Supreme Court where it will be thrown out as Trump won’t want anything affecting share prices.
