That's according to a prominent U.S. economist, Laurence Kotlikoff, who has come up with some startling figures claiming America's national debt is $200 trillion, far greater than the official figure of $13 trillion.

But even with the declared amount оf public debt (over $8.7 trillion), it means that an average share for every US citizen amounts to over $28000.

And according to observers, the national debt has been increasing at an average of $4 billion per day since September 2007.

“The debt numbers that our government is putting out portray a small part of the total problem that we face. We have huge implicit, unofficial debts to pay, like Medicare benefits,” noted the economist. “When you look at all the debts, all the obligations that we call the fiscal gap… the gap is enormous, it’s about $200 trillion.”

“Paying off that fiscal gap requires coming up with about 14% of the GDP every year, year after year, through time. And that is really a prescription to bankruptcy because we cannot really afford that. Bankruptcy means that you cannot pay your future bills. It does not mean that you cannot pay your current bills, because if you cannot pay them you are already bankrupt,” Kotlikoff pointed out.