We offer, more or less without comment, the following statement of Niall Ferguson, appearing in his article Obama’s Gotta Go at Newsweek.com — go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack-obama-needs-to-go.html :
“The most recent estimate for the difference between the net present value of federal government liabilities and the net present value of future federal revenues—what economist Larry Kotlikoff calls the true “fiscal gap”—is $222 trillion.” Emphasis in the original.
We just can’t see how that “fiscal gap” can be bridged without a government-engineered runaway inflation.
If you are not acquainted with Ferguson’s view of things, he is no gloom-and-doom peddler. We highly recommend his book, CIVILIZATION: THE WEST AND THE REST. It explains a lot about the condition of the world and the reasons why the United States became the promised land, unlike any other.