The scariest graphic I've seen in a long time

 

In a lengthy analysis of the USA's debt overload and what might be done about it, Glenn Reynolds provides this graphic.  It illustrates how long, in years and (lately) months, it takes to add $1 trillion to the national debt.  Click the image for a larger view.

The slope is inexorably rising, and the time taken to spend each trillion (that we haven't got, but have to borrow) is growing shorter and shorter.  It's completely unsustainable.  Sooner or later (and my bet's on sooner), lenders and investors will refuse to fund such profligate expenditure - and then where will we be?

Reynolds offers several interesting suggestions for ways to approach the problem, but none of them can actually fix it, because that depends on politicians - and the politicians depend on their rake-offs from such wasteful spending, and are not about to shoot themselves in the wallet for the good of the country.  That being the case, Reynolds suggests that states and businesses prepare themselves for the inevitable by building up cushions of essential necessities, putting financial reserves into alternate stores of value or investments, and cutting our own wasteful expenditure to a minimum.  His whole article is well worth reading, and I recommend it.

For us as individuals and families, a primary concern is that if we rely on federal government money to survive (Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, welfare, unemployment insurance, or anything like that), those subsidies are not likely to survive a debt collapse.  FEMA disaster assistance might be a distant memory.  Even government pensions and workers compensation programs might face the axe.  The money to pay for them (at least, at present levels) simply won't be there.  That means even basic services like the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often paid out via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), will also no longer be available.

Millions upon millions of Americans depend on those services.  What will they do when they find themselves unable to pay for the food they eat every day?  I suspect the answer to that question is going to be very, very ugly.  A national debt collapse might lead to a collapse of our national society (at least in large cities, where those most dependent on such programs are concentrated).

There isn't anything we as individuals can do about this, except prepare ourselves, our families and our homes as best we can with the resources available to us to survive hard times;  and, of course, team up with like-minded people to help each other make it as best we can.  I hope most of my readers are already doing that.  Nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed.

That graphic makes clear, more than any words, how parlous is our financial situation as a nation.  We're shortly going to experience Stein's Law in action at first hand.

THIS CANNOT CONTINUE.

SOONER OR LATER,

THINGS ARE GOING TO GO SMASH.

Peter