That would represent 12.3percentt of the gross domestic product, a deficit level that is larger than any since the end of World War II.
Members of parliament recoiled in horror when finance minister Alistair Darling this week predicted a 12.0%-of-gross domestic product budget deficit for the year.
"As a percentage of gross domestic product, the deficits are below the historical peaks that we've seen in the past," says J.T. Young, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.
Under rules intended to protect the euro, European Union countries may be fined up to 0.5percentt of gross domestic product for deficits higher than 3percentt of G.D.P. France and Germany, close to recession, have overstepped that limit for two years.
The bad news, Mr. Roubini says, is that stability was purchased at an enormous price: "Thanks to all the bailouts, guarantees, stimulus plans, and other costs of managing the crisis, the public debt of the United States will effectively double as a share of the nation's gross domestic product, as deficits in the coming decade are expected to hit $9 trillion or more".
As a percentage of gross domestic product, the annual deficit is below its forty-year average.
The conflict in Colombia is historically the product of a deficit in democracy, further curbed by violence itself.
The budget office data show that between 2000 and 2005, the federal budget went from a surplus of 2.4percentt of gross domestic product to a deficit of 2.6percentt.
From the beginning of 2001 through the third quarter of 2002, the federal government leapt from a surplus (including Social Security) amounting to 2.3percentt of gross domestic product to a deficit of the same size.
And if the nation plunges into a deeper recession, with tax revenues dropping and domestic product shrinking, the deficit will be even larger as a proportion of the economy.
