$15 trillion in Debt Held By the Public

The US finally hit $15 trillion in Debt Held By the Public on Feb 15, 2018.  The exact number was 15,018,135,646,693.34.  This is actually a bigger milestone than the $20 trillion National Debt because that includes the number held by the Social Security trustees, not that that isn't real debt, but it represents wealth to the holders, which are the general public. 

Many many moons ago in 2013, in this really old post, I predicted that a "Junior Day of Reckoning" would occur when we hit $15 trillion, and that it would occur about December 31, 2015.  So it took 2 years longer than I had predicted at that time.  And it doesn't seem like there is any sort of wall, other than the fact that spending is suddenly skyrocketing.

When did we cross the $7.5 trillion debt held by the public number?  On 9/15/2009.  So it took exactly 8 years and 5 months.  If it takes 8.5 years to double, we should be at $30 trillion held by the public on 8/15/2026.

We may need to start using floating point notation to represent it.  So the debt held by the public in floating point notation is $15 x 10^12.

I wonder when the deficit will first cross $2 trillion per year.  Maybe in FY 2020.  But that is just a wild guess.  We know that in a recession that government revenues drop and spending increases.  $5 trillion in spending and $3 trillion in revenue doesn't seem out of the question in a couple of years.