Art, reading Doug Casey will get you in trouble... . 8^) (Or out of it, one or 'tother.)
Move along folks, nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the nice professorial looking banker man behind the curtain, loading money into the helicopter. Doesn't mean anything- why, yes, you have seen him on television lately. But don't stare, it isn't polite. Yes, yes, it IS Mr. Bernanke. Now go on, don't be a nuisance.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/16/news/notes.phpLet's see, put it in writing, maybe that will help:
$9,000,000,000,000.00 That's nine trillion dollars. Of federal government debt, that they will OPENLY AND FREELY ADMIT TO. Nine thousand billion dollars, to put it another way. Or since a billion is a thousand million, that would be nine thousand, thousand million dollars.
Are you beginning to tumble to the scale of the debt I am talking about here yet? And as I said, this does not include the other interesting accounting tricks Uncle Sam uses to hide his profligate ways. You want an intro to those, take a look at
http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/ . It seems that total federal liabilities are in the neighborhood of $51 trillion. Some ritzy neighborhood, huh? Need a source? Mr Williams again, at
http://www.weedenco.com/welling/Downloads/2006/0804welling022106.pdf .
You want the humorous take on this, see the Mogambo Guru's column at
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/daughty/daughty032206.html . Sorry, but I see no humor in it at all, it scares the bejeezies out of me.
lpl/nc