Each card reads its figure directly from the panel below it at page load — not a separately maintained copy. If a panel's own numbers update, these do too.

MoneySpider | The Interest Bill

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Macro · The Economy

Red Ink Rising

The 85-year climb behind this year's bill: net interest on the federal debt, in dollars and as a share of the whole budget, FY1940–FY2025. Companion to The Interest Bill above, which tracks the live running total for the current fiscal year — this is the structural shape that produced it.

Net Interest, FY2025

$970.1B

$29.9B short of $1 trillion

Share of Federal Budget, FY2025

13.84%

of $7.01T total outlays

Historic Peak Share

15.45%

FY1996

Post-2010 Trough

5.17%

FY2021 (zero-rate era)

Net Interest, $ Billions · FY1940–FY2025

Linear scale — the flat-then-vertical shape is the actual data, not a chart artefact. Dashed line marks the $1 trillion threshold.

Net Interest as a Share of Total Federal Outlays · FY1940–FY2025

Same series, expressed as a percentage of that year's own budget — controls for economic growth and inflation. Today's 13.84% is high, but not yet past the mid-1990s peak. Descriptive only — no bands, no forecast.

Methodology. Fiscal-year actuals, FY1940–FY2025 (pre-1977 fiscal years ran Jul–Jun; the Jul–Sep 1976 transition quarter is omitted, per OMB convention — FY1977 begins Oct 1976). Net Interest = FRED series FYOINT ("Federal Outlays: Interest"), the OMB budget-function concept (function 900) — distinct from the BEA NIPA "gross interest payments" series sometimes shown elsewhere, which nets differently and runs higher. Total Federal Outlays = FRED series FYONET ("Federal Net Outlays"). Both series: U.S. Office of Management and Budget, retrieved via FRED 2026-07-28. Figures are actuals; subject to OMB/Treasury revision in future vintages.

Macro · The Economy

The Wiggle Room

How much of every federal revenue dollar is already claimed by mandatory spending and net interest — before Congress makes a single annual appropriations decision. Companion to The Interest Bill and Red Ink Rising above: those track the interest bill itself; this tracks what's left over once it, and every other legally-required payment, is made.

Wiggle Room, FY2025

1.9¢

left of every revenue dollar, after mandatory spending + net interest

Pre-Committed, FY2025

98.1%

mandatory + net interest ÷ revenue

First Breach

FY2009

108% — Global Financial Crisis, revenue collapse

Wiggle Room, FY2036 (CBO baseline)

−10¢

current law: mandatory + interest exceed total revenue

Mandatory Spending + Net Interest vs. Total Revenue · % of GDP · FY1962–FY2036

Solid = enacted actuals, FY1962–FY2025. Dashed = CBO's Feb 2026 current-law baseline, FY2026–FY2036. The shaded gap between the top of the stack and the revenue line is the wiggle room — where it inverts (highlighted), mandatory spending and net interest alone exceed total federal revenue.

Mandatory spending Net interest Total revenue Revenue exceeded

The Same Series, Rebased to Revenue = 100 · FY1962–FY2036

Same two series as above, each now expressed as a percentage of that year's own revenue instead of GDP — this controls for revenue's own swings across recessions and booms, so only the ratio itself is left on the page. 100 is the line: below it, some revenue remains after mandatory spending and interest; above it, they alone already exceed total federal revenue. This is the Pre-Commitment Ratio, drawn directly.

Mandatory spending Net interest Total revenue = 100 Revenue exceeded

The ratio. Pre-Commitment Ratio = (mandatory spending + net interest) ÷ total federal revenue. Wiggle Room = 100% minus that ratio, expressed as cents left per revenue dollar. "Mandatory" describes spending that occurs automatically under current law without passing through the annual appropriations process — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and similar programmes — not spending Congress is powerless to change; it can amend the underlying legislation at any time. This chart states what current law requires and what CBO's baseline projects, nothing more — it is not an argument for or against any particular fix.

Methodology. FY1962–FY2025: CBO's own Historical Budget Data (Feb 2026 vintage), pulled from CBO's machine-readable open-data repository, github.com/US-CBO/cbo-data (canonical publication: cbo.gov/publication/51134). Mandatory spending is net of offsetting receipts (CBO's own "Mandatory, Total" line); verified self-consistent against total outlays in every year. FY2026–FY2036: CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036 (Feb 2026), Table 1-1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 0.1% of GDP as published; the FY2025 headline stats above use CBO's unrounded dollar figures for precision (revenue $5,234.6bn; mandatory $4,167.6bn; net interest $969.9bn).

Net interest, pending reconciliation. This chart cites CBO's own net interest figure directly. It has not yet been reconciled against The Treasury's Treadmill's Interest Burden card, which isn't deployed yet — the two sources are close but not identical (CBO FY2025: $969.9bn; Treasury/Treadmill FY2025: $970.1bn), almost certainly a vintage or definitional difference rather than an error in either. This note will be updated once that reconciliation happens.

Full sourcing and the historical-tipping-point analysis behind this chart: RESEARCH/2026.08.21 US Federal Pre-Commitment Ratio (verified analysis).md.

MACRO LENS WORKING DRAFT

The Snowball

Twenty years of the U.S. federal deficit, split into what was interest on the debt and everything else. Net interest isn't just growing, it's compounding — nearly tripling since 2021 alone. The pale line marks this year's interest bill traced back through every prior year, to show how fast the snowball is now rolling.

$970.1B

Net interest paid in FY2025 — the largest dollar interest bill in U.S. history, and still rising

54.7%

Share of the entire FY2025 deficit that was just interest — up from 13% in FY2009

9 of 19

Prior fiscal years (FY2006–24) where the whole deficit was smaller than this year's interest bill alone

2.8×

Net interest has nearly tripled since FY2021's pandemic-era low ($352B) to $970B in FY2025 — in just four years

Federal deficit, FY2006–FY2025 — top: earliest · bottom: latest

Net interest Rest of the deficit FY2025 interest, traced back

FY

Deficit

Interest

2006

$248.2B

$226.6B

2007

$160.7B

$237.1B

2008

$458.6B

$252.8B

2009

$1,412.7B

$186.9B

2010

$1,294.4B

$196.2B

2011

$1,299.6B

$230.0B

2012

$1,076.6B

$220.4B

2013

$679.5B

$220.9B

2014

$484.6B

$229.0B

2015

$442.0B

$223.2B

2016

$584.7B

$240.0B

2017

$665.4B

$263.2B

2018

$779.1B

$325.0B

2019

$983.6B

$375.2B

2020

$3,132.5B

$345.5B

2021

$2,775.4B

$352.3B

2022

$1,376.7B

$475.9B

2023

$1,695.3B

$658.9B

2024

$1,832.7B

$881.7B

2025

$1,774.7B

$970.1B

$970B

$0B

$500B

$1.0T

$1.5T

$2.0T

$2.5T

$3.0T

Reading it: each bar's full length is that year's total deficit (or the interest amount, if larger). The green portion is net interest on the federal debt; the rest is everything else the deficit paid for. Deficit / Interest / Share on the right give the same numbers as plain figures. The pale line is fixed at FY2025's $970.1B interest bill, run straight down through every year above it. * FY2007: interest exceeded the entire deficit that year.

Source: FY2006–FY2024 actuals, OMB Historical Tables (Deficit/Surplus, Table 1.1; Net Interest, Table 3.1, function 900), via the U.S. Federal Fiscal Map compiled 29 Apr 2026. FY2025 from FRED series FYFSD (deficit, −$1,774.7B) and FYOINT (net interest, $970.065B), OMB/Treasury, retrieved 25 Aug 2026 — a Monthly Treasury Statement–based cut, pending final OMB revision. Cross-referenced against CBO's Fiscal Year 2025 Monthly Budget Review ($1.8T deficit; net interest "surpassed $1 trillion" on CBO's own accounting, which nets slightly differently to OMB's FYOINT — MoneySpider uses the FYOINT convention throughout for consistency with The Interest Bill and Red Ink Rising).

Double-Loop reviewed and accepted (conditional), not yet placed on the site. Three interest-themed pieces now live together on /macro, each answering a different question: The Interest Bill is the live, current-FY running total; Red Ink Rising is the 85-year climb, in dollars and share of budget; this one, The Snowball, measures this year's interest bill against every prior year's whole deficit.

Macro · The Economy

Manic Mr Market

Total US corporate equity value against the size of the whole US economy — Warren Buffett's own preferred single measure of market valuation, and the wealth-effect channel by which stretched markets feed back into household spending, borrowing, and confidence.

Buffett Indicator

218.1%

Significantly Overvalued

As of 2026 Q1

Corporate Equities (Fed Z.1)

$69.51T

2026 Q1

US GDP

$31.87T

2026 Q1

Historical Range, 1952–2026

32.2% – 228.7%

Mean 86.9%

42.1%

1952 Q1

Needle sweeps the full 1952–2026 history once, then settles — not a live reading.

Buffett Indicator, 1952 – 2026

Corporate equities ÷ GDP, %, quarterly (Fed Z.1 / BEA via FRED)

Methodology. Buffett Indicator = Nonfinancial Corporate Business corporate equities, liability level (FRED NCBEILQ027S, Fed Z.1 Financial Accounts) ÷ Gross Domestic Product (FRED GDP, BEA), ×100. This is the series Buffett's own original chart used — not the Wilshire 5000, which is a commercially-owned index (Wilshire Associates/FTSE Russell) licensed via the Financial Times; MoneySpider does not build against licensed third-party indices (see Data Sourcing & Licensing standard). The Fed-based reading tracks the popular Wilshire-based figure closely at present (both ~218–219% for Q1 2026) but has diverged more at other points in history and should not be read as numerically identical to it.

Bands are MoneySpider's own, not a copy of any third party's methodology: the five zones are quintiles of this series' own 1952–2026 history (thresholds 47.8 / 65.0 / 80.9 / 124.0), so "Significantly Overvalued" means "in the top fifth of readings since 1952," not a forecast of where the ratio is headed. Needle-through-time animation runs once on page load and settles — it is not a live or ticking element. The two small off-white ticks on the dial mark the series' own 1952–2026 extremes (32.2% low, 228.7% high — same figures as the Historical Range stat above), so a reading can be placed against the record as well as against the bands.

The Melting Anchor — the dollar priced in gold since 1971 (live)

MoneySpider · Macro — The Economy

The Melting Anchor

An ounce of gold is still an ounce. What changed is the dollar. A chart of the gold price rising flatters gold — invert it, and you see the truth: the dollar’s purchasing power, measured in gold, has quietly dissolved since convertibility was cut on 15 August 1971.

—

of its 1971 gold value is what a dollar holds today — a — loss of purchasing power in gold terms.

loading live gold…

—

per year, compounded — the steady annual erosion since 1971.

—

per decade — roughly half gone every ten years.

Reading it: both lines start at 100 in 1971. Gold’s price climbs; the dollar’s gold value falls toward zero — the same fact, told honestly. On a log scale the fall is a near-straight slope: a debasement that never really stopped.

“You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.”
— George Bernard Shaw, 1928

Anchor: $35/oz official convertibility peg, suspended 15 Aug 1971. History: annual average LBMA London gold, USD/oz (nominal). Latest point: live LBMA Gold PM fix via FRED GOLDPMGBD228NLBM (official daily fix). Index = ($35 ÷ gold price) × 100. Sources: LBMA · FRED · World Gold Council.

MoneySpider — U.S. Treasury Dashboard
Yield Curve, Dollar & Federal DebtEach panel dated to its own most recent public-domain data point.
Treasury Yield Curve
As of 17 Aug 2026 — U.S. Treasury daily par yield curve rates Confirmed
3-Month
—
2-Year
—
10-Year
—
30-Year
—
10Y–2Y Spread
—
curve not inverted

      MaturityNow1 Mo Ago1 Yr Ago

      
    Source: US Treasury, Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates (home.treasury.gov). Public-domain, Tier 1 — [Confirmed] read directly. Baked in at build time; re-pull from Treasury's CSV endpoint to refresh.
Dollar Index
As of 14 Aug 2026 — Federal Reserve H.10 Confirmed
—
—

        Shown: Federal Reserve Broad Dollar Index (Jan 2006 = 100), FRED series DTWEXBGS / Fed H.10 — not the ICE US Dollar Index (DXY), a proprietary commercial benchmark. Public-domain Fed series substitutes for the licensed index (same pattern as Manic Mr Market using FRED corporate-equities data rather than Wilshire 5000). Only a short trailing window was available at build time — a longer weekly history and 52-week range are a follow-up, not fabricated here.
      
Federal Debt Outstanding
As of 14 Aug 2026 — US Treasury, Debt to the Penny Confirmed
—

        Held by public: 
        Intragovernmental: 
      
Source: US Treasury Fiscal Data API, Debt to the Penny (fiscaldata.treasury.gov) — Tier 1, [Confirmed]. Long-run chart uses fiscal-year-end debt outstanding since 1970 (US Treasury, Historical Debt Outstanding), the same verified series underlying the Cowork "Us Debt Days Per Trillion" artifact, spliced with the latest daily reading above.

  Built from public-domain, Tier 1 sources only (US Treasury, Federal Reserve) per house data-sourcing policy — no proprietary indices. Figures baked in at build time; refresh by hand alongside Cape Fear / Mind the Gap (same static-array pattern — no live in-browser feed). Note: Melting Anchor's headline spot-gold figure is live (gold-api.com); only its historical series follows this same baked-in pattern.