http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/dont-look-down?f=puball
The title refers to the loveable Wylie E. Coyote screaming off a cliff with legs churning and no recognition that gravity will eventually have its way with him. This gravitational force is a metaphor for an unsustainable worldwide financial system built on fiat currency debt. Collapse would be due to hyperinflation. Such a collapse could be sudden or ~ a decade. Unfortunately, even most self-reliant Americans have no clue what is headed this way because the MSM is ignorant and has a rooting interest in believing we are well on the way to recovery with unemployment falling, the deficit cut in half and soaring asset values. Utter rubbish. With information instantly available to all (www.zerohedge.com and http://www.economicnoise.com/ are a must), ignorance of “the rest of the story” is appalling – but bring a Fed official, CEO or rosy analyst into the studio and these intrepid reporters simply gush.
Obama isn’t the cause of the potential financial tsunami coming ashore, though he is a powerful accelerant to it with every policy he has put in place. Instead this possible collapse has been building since 1971 when Nixon took us off the gold standard. And of course W. Bush contributed mightily to our circumstance as the second largest spender in history and not noticing the debt bubble inflating.
As I believe correctly described here http://www.internationalman.com/articles/understanding-hyperinflation (see Loss Due to Hyperinflation), the hyperinflation that causes catastrophe will be unlike the 1970s with rising interest rates, prices and wages because we are far worse off now. If interest rates begin to soar in order to sell our debt, it is over.
The dollar is backed by nothing but confidence that the US will remain a financial and military superpower capable and willing to defend itself and paying its debts. In the cold light of reality our dollar has less value than your laundry ticket, because the laundry ticket is at least backed up by the value of the clothes it redeems.
While $17 Trillion is the agreed amount of the national debt, it doesn’t include all the unfunded and underfunded obligations and commitments of all governments (national, states and localities). According to various contrarian experts, the actual number could be in the $100 to $200T range. That it could be this high is due to government deception and incompetence. A very important recent study by professor James Hamilton of University of California – San Diego found that off-sheet obligations of the federal government were $70T in 2012, six times what was reported. Off-sheet obligations are government trust funds (the biggies Social Security, Medicare) and things like student loan guarantees and FHA and deposit guarantees. (See http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~jhamilto/Cato_paper.pdf).