Peak Debt, a parable

There are limits to debt-issuance and consequences for those who ignore them, even in the case of sovereign governments managing their own currencies.

The Japanese have long been cited as a example of why, as per Republican/USA ideology, deficits of any variety do not matter. In the long run, we are all dead said Keynes, but before then we have debts to pay. The long run has now caught up with the Japanese and is increasingly gaining on the rest of the OECD/developed world.

These two articles, linked, below explain this better than I can.

There is a short version of this, here and a long version, here.

This is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand why the path that most Govt’s have taken out of the recent crisis will most likely turn out to have lain the seeds of the next, the last and biggest crash.

Granted there are one or two factors that make Japan a more extreme example than other OECD state balance sheets but the principle and the problem are exactly the same.