USPD doubling or declining in next decade estimated by WASD neuronet using data as of October 2013

Abstract

Recently, the total public debt outstanding (TPDO) of the United States has increased rapidly, and to more than $17 trillion on October 18, 2013. It is important and necessary to conduct the TPDO projection for better policies making and more effective measurements taken. In this paper, we present the ten-year projection for the public debt of the United States (termed also the US public debt, USPD) via a 3-layer feed-forward neuronet. Specifically, using the calendar year data on the USPD from the Department of the Treasury, the neuronet is trained, and then is applied to projection. Via a series of numerical tests, we find that there are several possibilities of the change of the USPD in the future, which are classified into two categories in terms of projection trend: the continuous-increase trend and the increase-peak-decline trend. In the most possible situation, the neuronet indicates that the TPDO of the United States is projected to increase, and it will double in 2019 and double again in 2024.