$1.299 Trillion

United States Posts Second Highest Deficit In Its History

$1.299 trillion.

The final deficit number from 2011 is now in, and it's not pretty.

The United States posted a deficit of $1.299 trillion for fiscal 2011, which was the second largest deficit in its history. The largest deficit ever was posted in 2009, when the United States spent $1.416 trillion more than it brought in.

Here is the progression over the last five years:

2007 - $162 billion deficit
2008 - $455 billion deficit
2009 - $1.416 trillion deficit
2010 - $1.294 trillion deficit
2011 - $1.299 trillion deficit

Source: US Deficit History

The $1.299 trillion figure is obviously nasty, but it could have been quite a bit worse. Early estimates had the United States running a deficit of $1.6 trillion for the 2011 fiscal year.

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The depressing thing about the current string of deficits is that there is no end in sight.

The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) projects that the United States won't even come close to posting a balanced budget between now and 2021 - as a matter of fact, the CBO predicts that the United States won't post a deficit of less than $500 billion over the next decade.

This will obviously continue to put stress on the country as a whole, as it will be forced to borrow trillions upon trillions of dollars. Borrowing trillions of dollars isn't cheap.

The United States currently owes a little under $14.9 trillion.