SOS USA

China, Japan, UK, Caribbean & Middle East hold about USD2.0 trillion US Debt.

USA reserve on gold is about USD225 billion @ USD900 per ounce.

USA total debt is about USD50 trillion, out of which Federal Debt is about USD10 trillion.

USA GDP is about USD14 trillion and Earnings of USD1.2 trillion.

It is doubtful if USA is able to repay its loans, not to mentioned that significant contribution to the Earnings is from financial and housing industries, which has since collapse.

USA derivatives, estimated to be around half of total world derivatives of USD600 trillion.

The mortgage market size is about USD20 trillion, not to mentioned the derivatives created from this market would be at least 5-10 times more.

MyView

Mathematically speaking, USA has overgeared 358% of GDP, over consumed at 70% of GDP. The next question is the GDP is highly inflated by the financial, housing and derivatives industries. Just take earnings after interest (private) , interest on private debt of about USD40trillion x 3% = 1.2 trillion, the interest cover about 1 time. This is not very healthy, especially there is so much to write down on toxic assets (4 big banks has a off balance sheet of derivatives of USD5.2trillion) and Roubini expect the write of of bad debts of about USD2 trillion.

Say a normalised GDP is USD10 trillion (adjust for sustainable gearing of 200% and consumption of say 50% of GDP), the earnings will drop to USD0.7 trillion.