Our National Debt

I’ve been hearing a lot this week about the booming U.S. economy, and then I got the following quote in one of my daily newsletters:

I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
-Thomas Jefferson

Which got me wondering exactly where our debt stands today, which as of this writing is $8,110,766,8637.94 (see here for a cheery update).  Then I got that familiar feeling and realized that this sounds a lot like what happened in the Big 80’s when Reagan tripled our national debt.  Initially, there was a big boom, and then like in an explosion, the boom was followed by a big mess.