Systemic Debt 2018

A number of years ago, I came up with a measurement I called "Systemic Debt".  I was trying to have my own calculation of what Laurence Kotlikoff was then claiming.  He was claiming a fiscal gap of over $200 trillion.  He hasn't updated his calculation recently and I think he overstated the number.

But there still might be something to my Systemic Debt Theory.  This theory states that the "system", which is mostly the Federal government, Federal Reserve and the Big Banks, have an implicit commitment to paying the systemic debt and not allow widespread defaults on it.  It is made up of 5 components which will be described later.

The last time I did this calculation was as of 12/31/2012 and I came up with $81,906 billion.

Here are the current numbers:

Category	Note	Amount
TCMDO	[1]	72,098
Intragov	[2]	5,872
FERS	[3]	7,982
SS	[4]	13,900
Medicare	[5]	5,300
		105,152

And here are the sources for those numbers:

[1]		https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO as of the quarter beginning 2018-10-01.
[2]		https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current as of 12/31/18
[3]		https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/files/reports-statements/financial-report/2018/Executivesummary-2018.pdf
		as of 9/30/18
[4]		https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2019/tr2019.pdf
[5]		https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/Downloads/TR2019.pdf

This does not include the unfunded portions of Medicare Parts B or D.

So this number is up 28% in 6 years.  This number can never-ever go down (except for a small amount), and it will go up about 3% per year.

Update: Laurence Kotlikoff is still talking about the fiscal gap and he says that the current number is $239.1 trillion.  Over half of this number, $142.2 trillion, is for amounts due after the year 2090.  I personally am not too concerned about what happens after 2090.