But at the end of 2007, the federal debt was 64.4 percent of the economy. Today, it is estimated at around 100 percent of gross domestic product, a share not seen since the aftermath of World War II, and there is little chance of lawmakers reaching consensus on additional stimulus that would increase the debt.

Gold could surge to US$2,500 per ounce or higher by the end of 2011, according to J.P. Morgan commodity analysts Colin Fenton and Jonah Waxman.

Gold vaulted above $1,700 an ounce for the first time on Monday after pledges by the G7 and the European Central Bank to quell the turbulence in the financial markets did nothing to put investors at ease.

The sum wiped off the MSCI All-Country World Index is almost equivalent to the size of the entire French economy.

China, the largest foreign investor in U.S. government securities, joined Russia in criticizing American policy makers for failing to ensure borrowing is reined in after a stopgap deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.

“If we don’t come to an agreement, we could lose our country’s AAA credit rating, not because we didn’t have the capacity to pay our bills — we do — but because we didn’t have a AAA political system to match our AAA credit rating,” Obama said at the White House.

U.S. banks searching for hints of credit-market distress ahead of next week’s deadline to raise the debt ceiling are finding few signs of panic so far.

‘It’s a dangerous game we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now,” Obama said in a prime-time address from the White House. “We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare.”

Gold climbed to a record in New York and London as U.S. lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on raising the federal debt limit, boosting demand for the metal as a protection of wealth.

American businesses, from Wall Street banks to major industrial corporations, are preparing contingency plans for a pair of once-unthinkable events: the United States defaulting on its debt and the loss of the nation’s top AAA credit rating.