halving the us deficit in 4 years, page-5

Good question.

The current value of the national debt is $ 11 trillion:

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock

To halve it, the US government would need to generate $ 5.5 trillion in surpluses, or sell gold. That sounds like uummmmmm..................a joke.

I don't think anyone seriously believes the US is committed let alone competent to achieve this much debt reduction.

I think it is just a weak ploy to show creditor countries like China that there is some desire to curtail debt but recent comments from the Chinese premier suggest they are not buying the bluff.

The US has about 8000 tonnes of gold, or 8 million kilos. Assuming they can sell it at current prices (highly improbable), of around US$29,000 a kilo that works out to roughly $ 232 billion. This will make a good dent on but not meaningfully reduce the outstanding debt.

So that makes me believe they won't sell gold to reduce the debt. If they do, it sends the wrong message to the world and further threatens the status of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world.