The Government Owes More Than Everything We Make.

The Government Accountability Office — Congress's own watchdog — just published a report with a title that should make you spit out your coffee. The federal debt, they inform us, has grown to the size of the entire U.S. economy. $31.3 trillion.

They are "concerned."

We appreciate the transparency.

Now, $31.3 trillion is a number so large it stops meaning anything. So let's bring it home. If you owe the bank more than you make in a year, that's a problem.

And here's the part they buried in the charts: last year alone, the federal government spent nearly $1 trillion just on interest payments. Not on roads. Not on schools. Not on defense. On the privilege of having already spent money it didn't have.

A trillion dollars… to service the story.

Because that's what debt is, when you think about it. A story. A shared agreement that tomorrow will be richer than today, so it's fine to spend tomorrow's money now. The whole system runs on that belief — economists call it "credit," which comes from the Latin credere… to believe.

It is, in a real sense, a religion. And the Federal Reserve is its church.

The GAO's proposed solution? "Changing tax and spending policy." "Adopting a debt target." "Addressing financial gaps in Social Security and Medicare." All perfectly reasonable. All things we've been told for 20 years. All things that have not happened — and will not happen — because the people writing the checks are the same people cashing them.

Meanwhile, Social Security hits empty in 2032. Medicare in 2033. That's the government's own math.

We are not here to tell you what to do about any of this. That's a conversation for your financial advisor — and possibly your therapist.

But we will note one thing. For about 5,000 years, humans stored their wealth in something that couldn't be printed, couldn't be debased, and didn't require anyone's "full faith and credit" to hold its value. It just sat there. Being gold.

It still does.

Stay tuned.