Doug Hornig, senior prognosticator at The Casey Report, analyzes the alarming trend of U.S. federal debt and its future implications.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said Blanche DuBois, in the final words of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. Well, don’t we all.

Many citizens probably still cling to the old saw that public debt doesn’t matter because “we owe it to ourselves.” Wrong. Debt always matters. And as for whom we owe it to, it is a lot of kind (or, at least, not yet unkind) strangers.

As one more bit of proof that the education system of the United States is a dysfunctional piece of liberal crap, how else to explain the fact the far-leftist moron Michael Moore actually got funding, which assumes an interested audience, for his latest movie, titled Capitalism: A Love Story, which, according to Reuters, “launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.” Hahaha!

World stocks slid on Wednesday after a mixed report on U.S. durable goods orders reignited doubts about economic recovery while oil prices fell on news of rising U.S. crude stockpiles.

Hedge fund legend Julian Robertson is betting the farm against long-dated US Treasurys. As Notes readers will be aware, we have been banging the drum on the vulnerability of long-dated US debt for over a month now. But Robertson, of Tiger Management fame, has a different way to make this short long-term Treasurys play (hat tip Market Folly).

Brother, can you spare half a million? Your family’s (new and improved) share of U.S. debt… GM officially kaput… the dirty details and a brief rant, below… Markets hit a critical “pivot point,” says Rob Parenteau… The one number from China that’s boosting stocks, commodities and currencies today… Plus, two good reasons to buy a precious metal… especially silver

Bonds down. Gold up $17. Someone seems to think there is a whiff of inflation in the air. Sniff…sniff….

The United Kingdom’s mounting pile of government IOUs toppled it from the list of countries holding the highest-rated credit today (Thursday), which resulted in Standard & Poor’s lowering its outlook on the United Kingdom’s debt to “negative” from “stable.”

One of the problems with orthodox economics is it misses the point on human behavior. Orthodox economists build their models around the assumption of rational behavior of large groups of people. There is therefore always a gulf between this type of economic theory and the real world.

We lay awake last night wondering if we’d made a terrible mistake warning notes readers of the coming “Great Inflation.” We know that the government is spending unprecedented sums of borrowed and printed cash to ‘fix’ the economy… the money supply as measured by M2 is shooting up (at an annualized rate of 14% over the past six months)… but the threat of deflation remains.

There is an old Wall Street adage that no one rings a bell at major market tops or market bottoms. That may be true in normal times, but as many have noticed, we are now completely through the looking glass.