In the year 2000, as George W. Bush assumed the role of 43rd president of the United States, America’s national debt stood at $ 5.7 trillion, while the annual GDP was $10.7 trillion. Now, fourteen years later, with the U.S. GDP standing at $16.2 trillion, the gross national debt exceeds $17.5 trillion. The numbers are so massive, they numb our consciousness and render America’s fiscal reality incomprehensible. Thus explains the lack of public arousal over the size of the country’s federal government debt. What cannot be understood-or explained- is deemed irrelevant to the public at large. After all, what impact could the nation’s archaic fiscal bookkeeping have in the lives of the average citizen?

History, however, teaches a very different lesson. The historical record on the rise and fall of major powers reveals more often than not that the sovereign’s fiscal insolvency is more likely to lead to its demise than military defeat. Witness the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the British and French empires in the last half of the twentieth century.

A look at the statistics of the U.S. national debt tells a story of fiscal nirvana. Between  2000 and 2014 America’s GDP grew, in nominal terms, by 51 percent. In that same period, the national debt increased by more than 200 percent.  In other words, during the past decade and a half, the U.S. national debt has grown at four times the rate of its national economy. This would appear to be an unsustainable expansion of the national debt, yet there appears to be no obvious signs of economic or financial crisis afflicting the nation, despite the clear fiscal trajectory.

Appearances are deceiving, owing to a unique institution, the Federal Reserve, and equally unique status of the American dollar as the  global reserve currency. The unprecedented interventions  enacted by the Federal Reserve since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008, including quantitative easing and debt monetization, have had the effect of artificially depressing interest rates the U.S. Treasury pays on its debt instruments. At times, America’s bonds have sold widely on the global debt market, despite paying near zero interest rates. To put this monetary and fiscal alchemy into perspective, in 2000 the U.S. made $362 billion in interest payments; the figure for 2013 was $415 billion, despite the national debt that year being three times larger than in 2000. Factoring in the growth in the federal budget over that same period, the proportion of federal outlays devoted to debt servicing costs in 2013 was actually significantly lower than was the case in 2000.

What this all means is that the United States has no fiscal problem, as long as the Federal Reserve can maintain artificially low interest rates in perpetuity. Failing that, when interest rates return to normal levels, America’s fiscal reality will become mathematically unsustainable, leading to a profound budgetary crisis. When that happens cannot be predicted, but it is a matter of metaphysical certainty that it will, and when that dreaded day occurs, it will be beyond the capacity of Washington’s policymakers, including the Federal Reserve, to conjure up a solution devoid of pain.

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As the United States national debt reaches parity with total annual GDP, President Barack Obama continues to preside over a record level of deficit spending by the federal government. He has just sent to Congress a proposed $3.73 trillion budget for FY 2012, while forecasting a record $1.65 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. Earlier, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the current deficit would reach at least $1.5 trillion. These figures mean that America remains trapped with unsustainable structural mega-deficits,  and that more than 40 percent of everything the U.S. federal government spends is financed with borrowed money.

As I have commented on before, this level of government indebtedness just cannot be sustained, and will lead to catastrophic repercussions. While the politicians in Washington, particularly in the Obama administration, pay lip service to the need to “rein in” this profligate public spending, nobody believes that they are serious. The president’s claim that he “plans” to reduce the deficit cumulatively over ten years by just over a trillion dollars is an utter farce, since even by the most optimistic forecasts this would leave a combined deficit over the decade of more than ten trillion dollars.

The problem, however, is not uniquely one of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The Republicans, who left for Obama as an inaugural present in 2009 a first-ever annual deficit to exceed a trillion dollars, are as intellectually bankrupt as are their adversaries on the other side of the aisle. The GOP is equally bereft of ideas on how to control this raging fiscal train wreck, offering little more than worn-out cliches such as reducing taxes, as though that would not further exacerbate the federal government’s structural mega-deficit.

What we are witnessing is not only an economic and fiscal calamity in the making. It is as much a display of political dysfunctionality and moral cowardice as it is of inept fiscal policy. Which leads to the melancholy conclusion that it will not be the political echelon in Washington that ultimately  imposes budgetary discipline on public spending. Increasingly likely is a doomsday scenario, in which the bond vigilantes, well practiced already with their punishing assaults on the credit ratings of Greece, Ireland and now Portugal, unleash the full fury of the market place on Uncle Sam. When that fiscally apocalyptic moment arrives, not even the impressive weight of political inertia that resides in Washington DC will be able to impede a sovereign debt crisis in the United States that will not only cripple the nation’s economy with devastating effect; it will likely dispossess the next generation of Americans  of their future.

Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has issued a stark warning regarding the ballooning U.S. federal government annual deficit and cumulative national debt. Hoenig told  the Pew-Peterson Commission on Budget Reform that massive deficits being  projected by the Obama administration would endanger the Fed’s ability to fulfill its mandate of maintaining stable economic growth and price stability.

“Without pre-emptive action, the U.S. risks its next crisis,” stated Hoenig. What this senior Federal Reserve official is saying, on the public record, is that the current U.S. fiscal policies are unsustainable, and unless halted and reversed in short order, will precipitate a hyper-inflationary depression.

Paul Revere has spoken. But who is listening? Certainly not the economic policymakers in Washington DC, who believe only small countries like Greece can face national insolvency. Sooner then they can imagine, they will receive an education  which unfortunately will cost their countrymen dear.

In less than a year we have seen the bankruptcy of financial and industrial behemoths once thought impregnable: Lehman Brothers, Chrysler and GM. Selectively employing the mantra “too big to fail” with companies such as AIG and Citigroup, the U.S. government has sought to reassure the American public that it is acceptable for other large corporations to endure the tribulations of Chapter 11 reorganization; that bankruptcy is actually a healthy business process that will restore profitability to large companies overwhelmed by debt and the consequences of the Global Economic Crisis. Yet, amid this Orwellian business vocabulary, the most essential question is perhaps being missed. Will the United States government be forced into bankruptcy?

If your reaction is one of incredulity, with the temptation to write off such a dire mega-financial event as a fringe-group fantasy, think again. Witness what some otherwise boring yet highly respected accountants and bankers have been saying recently about the exploding indebtedness of the United States.

David M. Walker served as the Comptroller-General of the United States from 1998 to 2008. In his capacity as the chief congressional financial watchdog, Walker warned long before the onset of the current financial and economic crisis that the nation faced more than $50 trillion in unfunded obligations due to Medicare and Social Security. Rather than allocating revenue to ensure these future liabilities were fully funded, Congress and the federal government have done exactly the opposite. Not only has no funding provision been made for these two major entitlement programs; while Medicare and Social Security have been in surplus their revenue stream has been used to artificially deflate the actual government deficit. Unfortunately, this shell game will come to an end in only a few years, when both programs enter into extreme and growing deficits of their own. And the figure of $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities, separate and apart from the U.S. government’s official national debt of more than $11 trillion, is already outdated by a cascading avalanche of dire financial news.

Richard W. Fisher, President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, delivered a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California back in May, and revealed that the authentic national debt of the United States, using generally accepted accounting principals, was nearly $100 trillion! Putting this surreal as well as apocalyptic number in perspective, Fisher said, “With a total population of 304 million, from infants to the elderly, the per-person payment to the federal treasury would come to $330,000. This comes to $1.3 million per family of four, over 25 times the average household’s income.”

It is in the context of an already fragile fiscal architecture that the Obama administration and Congress are unleashing a torrent of unprecedented debt. The rationale is that this must be done, or the economy will crater. For the sake of short-term moderation of the worst ravages of the Global Economic Crisis, an already disastrous fiscal posture is being stampeded towards unmitigated catastrophe. Yet, the political leadership still claims it is committed to fiscal responsibility and that once the economy recovers and strong economic growth is restored, the deficit will shrink as a proportion of the nation’s GDP. Does anyone still believe these political promises of a new era of fiscal discipline that surely awaits us just around the bend?

There is mounting evidence that America’s primary overseas creditors are no longer easily fooled. Their collective skepticism is mounting, as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner discovered recently on his beggar’s expedition to China. The policymakers in Beijing are shifting their sovereign fund investments from U.S. Treasuries to commodities as a clear indication of their growing concern about the staggering level of indebtedness of the United States. And they are not the only major global financial actors to manifest a growing level of unease at Uncle Sam’s ballooning debt.

The Co-Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Investment Management Company, otherwise known as Pimco, is Bill Gross. He is one of the most important individuals on the planet at this time of global crisis, as Pimco manages the world’s largest bond fund. It is through the bond market that sovereigns finance their national debt. This is what he had to say about the credibility of the Washington political establishment on its claimed intent to restore fiscal sanity:

“While policymakers, including the President and Treasury Secretary Geithner, assure voters and financial markets alike that such a path is unsustainable and that a return to fiscal conservatism is just around the recovery’s corner, it is hard to comprehend exactly how that more balanced rabbit can be pulled out of Washington’s hat.”

Undoubtedly, Mr. Gross is correct. There is no rabbit to pull out of a magician’s hat. Which leaves just three alternatives for resolving America’s fiscal imbalance: 1. Raise taxes exorbitantly and/or drastically cut government expenditures 2.Unleash hyperinflation to reduce the real value of the national debt-and destroy the value of the currency in the process 3.Default on the national debt.

Defaulting on the national debt, which in effect is a declaration of U.S. insolvency, would have tectonic ramifications for the entire global system. Financial and economic power, international relations and strategic alliances would be altered so radically, the world that would ultimately emerge would be vastly different from the one we know today. While its exact composition cannot be predicted, it is a rule of history that great powers that go bankrupt lose their great power status.

Do any members of the Washington political establishment actually reflect on the long-term implications of the untenable fiscal policies they have authorized with their votes? If there are, they are sadly too few in numbers.

In contrast with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Bank of England governor is watching the accumulating public debt with deep concern, instead of advocating massive quantitative easing, as it is being executed in the U.S. by the Federal Reserve. Mervyn King is clearly worried about the long-term implications of the growing national debt driven by fiscal imbalances, recognizing the future and destabilizing dangers of hyperinflation and national insolvency. Carefully worded and diplomatic as his message was, King’s warning is a clear message to the British political establishment: the current budgetary trajectory is unsustainable.

How bad is the U.K.’s fiscal posture? The true answer is obscured by the accounting rules being applied by the British government, which has assumed the costs and risks of bailing out the U.K.’s largely insolvent banking sector. By some calculations, the loans and guarantees have created a potential public liability of approximately $700 billion that is not reflected in official public debt figures, which stand at about one trillion dollars, or 47% of the nation’s GDP.

In comparison, there are no warnings about massive U.S. budgetary deficits that are being planned by politicians for the next decade, far beyond the three-year time limit King recommended to the MPs on the Treasury Committee. Yet, the United States has an even more daunting debt problem than the United Kingdom. At present, the national debt of the United States exceeds $11 trillion, equivalent to 78% of GDP, a much higher figure than during the New Deal period of the Great Depression of the 1930s. With U.S. GDP projected to shrink in the current fiscal year while deficits add at least $2 trillion to the national debt (my estimate), the ratio of public debt will rise to a point approaching the entire GDP, perhaps within the next five years.

There is another aspect to the U.S. public debt crisis. In 2008, the Federal government spent $412 billion on interest payments for servicing of the national debt. Currently, interest rates are at record lows; the U.S. Treasury has even been able to auction off short-term Treasuries at zero interest rates. However, the inevitable erosion of the dollar’s intrinsic value and changing market conditions will drive up interest rates. That, in combination with the rapid growth in the public debt, could mean interest payments soon becoming the largest proportion of Federal spending, even surpassing military outlays. In a few years, debt-servicing costs may exceed one trillion dollars annually.

As if things were not bad enough, the U.S. government has made massive commitments in terms of direct borrowing and backstop guarantees in the trillions of dollars for bailing out the financial, banking, mortgage and even industrial sectors. Except for the TARP program, these massive fiscal obligations are off the books, but may very well come due, at the expense of the already over-leveraged U.S. taxpayers.

Mervyn King has displayed a rare example of candor and intellectual courage among the central bankers and politicians deciding our fate as the Global Economic Crisis intensifies. If only that same level of civic honesty could be replicated across the Atlantic.