There are obvious contradictions in government finance that are both shocking and absurd. There are opposing forces colliding before us with consequences hardly a soul can escape. To sum up the plot, there’s the soft delusion of prosperity through public spending running up against the hard reality of arithmetic.
The climax, and its brutal impartiality, is still a scene or two away. But once the inflection point is reached chaos and disorder will follow. This is the unfavorable place inhabitants of western nations find themselves these days.
“Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics,” wrote British number theorist Godfrey Hardy in 1941. When making this observation, Hardy didn’t likely have a fiat money world in mind…where the government borrows money created by the central bank to pay for things the economy can’t afford.
If Hardy could’ve taken a gander at the mammoth gap between government revenues and obligations, circa 2012, we guess he’d have concluded the Treasury is engaged in a serious case of ugly mathematics. Continue reading







