Reply #10: An excellent start. But the real legerdemain is the theft of incoming SS funds for general revenue.

[Psephos]

The government unscrupulously uses cash accounting. Money paid in for Social Security goes into current spending. The IOUs the government writes itself do not show up on the current year budget, and are not reported as deficit. But those IOUs must be paid, and the day is not far off. If the government used the same GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) system that corporations are required to use by law, which take into account future committed liabilities as well as present expenditures, then the true government deficit would be more like $5.1 trillion for 2008. Likely around $7 trillion for 2009. Total US indebtedness on accrual basis is currently about $50 trillion. That's more than the entire GDP of the whole planet. That's about five year's worth of every last cent the US generates all year long. Which would leave, obviously, nothing for anything else. No food. No power. No government. Nothing but a sucking vortex.

Today's troubles will seem like a brief rain shower when that mother of all storms comes rolling in. And yet, our triple-D government, which campaigned on pay-go and fiscal sanity, is now borrowing the most money any government has ever borrowed in human history as a way of fixing the problems caused by irresponsible and insane borrowing.

Utter, cynical madness.