Deficit forecast hiked to $9 trillion; Debt load to triple

The Obama administration threw in the towel on its optimistic deficit projections today. The White House is now forecasting cumulative deficits of $9 trillion over the next 10 years, compared with a previous estimate of $7.1 trillion. At the same time, the projection for this year's deficit dropped by $261 billion to $1.5 trillion; the improvement stems from the fact the banking sector didn't need as much bailout money as previously anticipated.

Something else that's scary to consider: Total U.S. government debt is now forecast to TRIPLE to $17.5 trillion by 2019. That's an increase of $2 trillion from the administration's May estimate. As a percentage of GDP, that'd be 76.5% (compared with 56% now). The debt load hasn't been this high in relative terms since World War II. More details can be found here.