If the U.S. federal government properly accounted for its explicit and promised
liabilities, it would record a national debt of $64 trillion and a national
deficit of $2.4 trillion in 2006. Although capital markets seem to care about
the officially reported budget deficit—a metric that is backward looking
and quite misleading—the markets have done little more than yawn at the
federal government’s mammoth, and growing, forward-looking budget
imbalance. Are investors uninformed? They should remember that the common belief
that capital markets cannot fail is precisely the reason why they can.