Here's a postcard from off-balance-sheet country.
This includes only current debt and not future unfunded obligations.
I like to call this US debt chart "The Last Bubble," but it could equally apply to a chart showing the representation of this debt - the US bonds, notes, bills and of course dollars, which are really nothing more than Federal Reserve Notes of zero duration in the modern fiatopia.
It all adds up, eventually, and must be reconciled. It is easier to print money and accumulate debt when you own the world's reserve currency. For a while the dollar might even flourish, despite the printing, as the international savers flee ahead of the economic hitmen, from country to country, and crisis to crisis.
Chart compliments of the Contrary Investor.