The American public gets it, even if successive US administrations have not. There are over 12m families who get it particularly well: they are those who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. They know we have been running on empty for years. Now President Barack Obama has officially withdrawn from the current round of budget talks, reducing hopes of a deal on the debt ceiling, a new era of American austerity is the only way to begin to put things right.
No wonder this is being called the most predictable crisis in US history. For who could dispute, when our government must borrow $4.5bn a day just to keep going, that our debt is now an existential threat? Wimpy, from the Popeye cartoons, got our attitude right: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, this week hinted that a third round of quantitative easing may be possible. But knowledgeable people in finance are aware that the Fed has been buying 70 per cent of all new Treasury paper, making the government by far the largest client of its own debt. This is possible only by increasing the money supply and the balance sheet of the Fed itself, a practice that sooner or later must blow up.