If it takes so little to unravel, how come endless doom screeched by half the world for centuries hasn't made the slightest impression?
The reality is government credit stands on government power to tax very wealthy and growing economies, and remains as strong as ever.
The reality about the supposed horror of unfunded liabilities is they are not debts, and only cost something if someone also receives them.
A further reality is that debt service is not a loss but about the most justified government expenditure imaginable, right up there with national defense, and practically everything else governments do is less defensible.
As for the dreams of a gold standard, it never worked as advertized when we had one and it died of natural causes, definitively. It is a horrible idea. And no, a commodity money doesn't prevent government spending or even currency debasement - the term "debasement" itself ought to tell anyone that.
The modern capitalist world is rich and will remain so, is not built on sand, and a gold bug telling you otherwise is no more plausible than a communist telling you otherwise. They've all been predicting the immediate demise of capitalism for as long as there has been capitalism and they are all idiots.
Seriously. Did you post that with a straight face? Capitalism doesn't punish people who create jobs by taxing them into insolvency. You must think it's 1986.
A capitalist system half owned by the central government is defined as something else. As someone who works on Wall Street, I can assure you that venture capitalism is on life support. Without seeders, the circuit comes to an abrupt halt at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The buying and selling of private real estate has gone out of private banks and into the federal government. You think Geithner/Obama are going to let the commercial real estate market go up and smoke, too? Hell no. They're going to own that, too. If the private sector can't even buy and sell real estate without government permission (i.e., selling back the mortgage securities, which, by the way, no one wants to buy back), it's impossible to call this trash heap capitalism.
I'm not sure this is true. The world is teetering on the brink of massive default because the bond houses sold this crap to every government on Earth. If one borrows, its brilliant. If everyone borrows it's not... Look at California, many other states, Greece, etc... all in way above sustainable cash flow levels. All threatening to default and all a burden to future growth. Too much debt is NOT a justified government expenditure any more than drinking 10 bottles of a good 1986 Cabernet in any one sitting is a good idea. There is TOO MUCH debt in the system and it is possible to destroy the system with too much debt. Watch Greece and others who have defaulted...