California economist says real US debt $70 trillion

"Or so claims a recent headline. But that's not what I actually said, as I try to clarify below.

In a recent paper I examined off-balance-sheet liabilities of the U.S. federal government. I concluded that these came to $70 trillion as of 2012, or 6 times the size of net federal debt held by the public. These off-balance-sheet liabilities take the form of implicit and explicit guarantees and commitments, but should not be construed as comparable to debt obligations of the U.S. Treasury.
The first decision you have to make in deciding how much the government really "owes" is how to treat government trust funds such as Social Security. These represent sums that the U.S. Treasury has promised to pay to the trust funds. They are counted as an asset of the trust funds and a liability of the U.S. Treasury. One perspective is that these represent obligations that one part of the U.S. government-- the Treasury-- has promised to pay to another part-- the Social Security Administration. If you view this as money that the federal government just owes to itself, you might choose to exclude it from your measure of government debt. Leaving out the sums that the Treasury owes to the various government trust funds leads to the measure known as the net federal debt, or debt owed to the public. This came to $11.3 trillion as of the end of fiscal year 2012..."

at http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2013/08/california_econ.html