Well contrary to some folks belief, that CXQ72 is about a King of
Terror, it is debt Payer, but an opinion has put the spotlight on the
on the wealth and the Golden Age
Or Busted Arse BAC's:


Promises exceed what America can pay - Thursday, July 20, 2006
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/07/20/opinion/opinion4.txt
SUMMARY: Gap between future expenses, future revenues may be too large
to bridge.

We have 65,900,000,000,000 reasons to worry about the future of the
country. That's how many dollars - $65.9 trillion - comprise the gap
between America's future expenditures and its future receipts. Those
future expenditures include all debts, as well as the cost of making
good on promises Congress has made to citizens, such as Social Security
and Medicare benefits for seniors, health care for poor people,
subsidies for farmers and all the rest.

That's not a new number. U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve economists
came up with that a couple of years ago. But a Boston University
professor and National Bureau of Economic Research associate, Laurence
Kotlikoff, has just retrieved that number out from under the rug the
government swept it and put it in an unsettlingly new context. In an
article just published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,
Kotlikoff asks, "Is the United States Bankrupt?"

The answer, by his calculation, is "maybe."

"Countries can and do go bankrupt," he writes. "The United
States, with its $65.9 trillion fiscal gap, seems clearly headed down
that path."

He says media and political fixation on federal budget deficits misses
the point. Annual budget deficits, which the Bush administration
recently heralded are decreasing, aren't the issue. What's crucial is
what the country owes and what it can pay. He points to a
"generational imbalance," in which the trailing generation can't
pay obligations owed to and created by the preceding generation. Paying
what the country owes and has promised would require doubling existing
taxes - permanently - a most unlikely prospect.

By some measures, he writes, "the U.S. government is, indeed,
bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in
this context, are current and future generations to whom it has
explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various
kinds."

The $65.9 trillion gap, by the way, is based on some optimistic
assumptions - for instance, a long-term rate of increase in health care
costs that's far lower than recent experience. Kotlikoff makes a strong
case that people counting on advances in technology and massive
immigration to pull the country's fiscal chestnuts out of the fire may
be engaging in wishful thinking.

Of course, actual bankruptcy isn't very likely. That's because most of
the future expenditures that make up the $65.9 trillion fiscal gap are
written on paper, not etched in stone. Congress creates these expenses
when it gives benefits, and it can reduce or eliminate them if - make
that "when" - it takes them away. That process has already begun:
Witness the increase to age 67 (and rising) from 65 for collecting full
Social Security benefits.

Kotlikoff has some suggestions for averting crisis: A 33 percent (no,
that's not a typo) national sales tax, replacing other taxes; honoring
accrued Social Security benefits but shutting down the retirement
portion of the program going forward; and replacing the crazy-quilt of
government health care programs and private insurance with a rather
complicated universal health care system involving vouchers and
designed to put a lid on future health-care increases. Bankruptcy seems
more likely than those particular remedies.

That's not to say the country's going to file Chapter 11. The
government isn't really the one with the exposure here. You are. The
wide gap between future expenses and revenues adds up to this: You
can't take future benefit promises from the government to the bank.