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.

The first public retirement pension scheme was created by Otto von Bismarck in 1880 Germany. Fifty years later, during the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt followed suit in the United States. As we’ve seen, the number of people expected to reach the retirement age of 65 was not considered to pose a threat to future funding.

Social Security? Not Exactly

You can’t go back. So don’t assume that as the U.S. and the West recovers, they’ll attract foreign capital just like they did before the recession. It’s a far different landscape now. The easy-credit bubbles are gone. And they’ve left us with a hellacious debt burden.

The Treasury is having a tough time hawking US debt these days.  This from today’s Financial Times: The 30-year Treasury yield rose to 4.30 per cent on Thursday from 4.10 per cent the day before after bids at the government auction came at lower prices than expected.

Christmas may be over, but Obama is keeping the ’season of giving’ going on the Hill…the next bubble will be in public debt… Stock prices are more ‘normal’ than they were a year ago…how many chickens can get in a plane engine? What is bad for GM is bad for America…just when you think you have things figured out, the facts change…and more!

The Feds try to reflate the world economy with $10 trillion but at what cost? As predicted in this space, the November payrolls were down a lot more than expected. Economists thought there would be 350,000 layoffs. Instead, the actual number was 200,000 more.

Life’s about to get much tougher…for all of us…It’s that R-word again. Loose talk of a ‘recession’ has been bandied about for some time, particularly amongst those of us who keep a keen eye on what’s happening in both the money markets and the high street.