U.S. in fiscal peril with $12.1 trillion debt

After $787 billion in stimulus spending and $700 billion in bank bailouts, 2010 is fast shaping up to be the year of the federal budget diet.

Bipartisan support is growing in Congress for action to stabilize the nation's bulging debt, which is now $12.1 trillion. Influential experts from former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan to former comptroller general David Walker have joined the cause.

The public debt is the amount owed to individual investors, including foreign countries, but excluding money the government owes to its own trust funds. It has soared from $5.8 trillion to $7.6 trillion this year alone — and is more than half the size of the nation's economy for the first time since 1956. (more)