Hence the reason you're so often out of the loop, rectum. Well that, and you're drunk most of the time.
If a $17 trillion debt isn't in bankruptcy I don't know what is. A combination of most people who don't want to worry about it because they can't do anything about it AND a President/Govt living in the lap of luxury with gold plated pensions/perks - I would guess it isn't ever going to be paid off, just kicked down the road a bit. The Chen family should show a bit of courage and put forward a plan for the US to pay it off or no more lolly. You can bet Kerry is offering to lay off the Syrians if the Chinese lower the debt burden. O'Bumble could look at foreign base expenditure. There used to be 50+ in Germany alone. I wonder what the present figure is ? Besides CIA prisons in remote parts of Poland, Kasackstan etc.
You're leaving out the GSEs and social security. On any balance sheet, these would be considered liabilities that would have to be included. When you add those in, you see how absurd the US fiscal situation is.
Salary of retired US Presidents ..$180,000 FOR LIFE Salary of House/Senate....$174,000 FOR LIFE Salary of Speaker of the House ....$223,500 FOR LIFE! Salary of Majority/Minority Leader $193,400 FOR LIFE Average Salary of a teacher .. $40,065 Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN .. $38,000
My bad, I should have said "rhetorical" or asked about the application. Anyway, he's right, because of the "and" in that definition. While I don't believe our liabilities are in excess of our assets, I'll grant that for the sake of argument, leaving "ability to service" those debts. And we are able to service our debt, clearly, since we are not in default. So the op's bit about us being bankrupt is wrong. Maybe we will be someday, when "winter comes", but we're not today.
This depends on your definition of what liabilities are. I think we can agree easily on an assets number.