Explore the story of U.S. federal debt with Long Default, a guide to America’s fiscal history.
Follow public debt, federal spending, revenue, and deficits through historical records and clear visualizations. Explore fiscal trends over time and see how the record changes across presidential administrations.
Built for students, educators, researchers, and anyone curious about public finances, Long Default brings official public data into an accessible reference for iPhone.
Data is drawn from U.S. Treasury and Office of Management and Budget publications. Observed figures, official estimates, and reconstructed historical values are distinguished, with missing data identified rather than filled in.
Long Default is an independent educational project and is not affiliated with the U.S. government.
Photo credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944 campaign portrait, by Leon Perskie. Courtesy of the FDR Presidential Library & Museum; gift of Beatrice Perskie Foxman and Dr. Stanley B. Foxman, 2009. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fdrlibrary/8145288140/ . Licensed under CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ . Retouched and cropped version via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=171293476 . Displayed as a reduced thumbnail.
