Businessinsider.com: “No government has ever commanded the resources at the disposal of our ungodly Leviathan, which consumes about 25% of the product of the world’s richest country. It is driven by a voracious alliance of government’s own employees, and those who receive benefits from the state. At least 90 million Americans either depend directly on government handouts or jobs, and each private worker must support not only himself and his family, but also carry a government worker on his shoulders.”

-Tom Bethel, “Freedom and its Enemies,” June 1999.

Financial markets don’t really do the long term anymore, but if they did, they might spend less time drooling at the prospect of more monetary crack, and more time wondering who will be funding all the government debt that now towers above everyone further than the eye can see. CLSA’s Russell Napier (hat tip to Macro Advisors’ Filip Ruszkowski) recently pointed to an ominous development from the summer of 2011:

“..a terrible burden fell upon the people of the USA. For the first time in 15 years, those who had money (savers) began to fund their government, rather than the printers of money (central banks). This shift has already hurt private-sector growth and asset prices, and as federal debt to GDP reaches 100%, it will squeeze out private-sector activity. Structural moves to coerce markets into funding government have begun in Europe and will come to the USA too..”
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