Edmund Conway's nice little revelations

The Economics Editor of the Telegraph has a very revealing piece today which tries to make sense of the real debt levels of European Countries, relative to other salient factors, such as growth and GDP.

I don't pretend to understand the half of it, but it is worth a look.

The quote that jumped out at me is:

all Western nations face a long-term dilemma (which has been the case since before the crisis, but is more front-and-centre of everyone’s minds now). Over the past 50 years we have committed ourselves to massive welfare states which our economies are simply not generating enough cash to finance

In other words, we are living in one giant Ponzi Scheme. Mr Conway includes several graphics, but the most chilling is this:

(Click on the graphic to see the whole chart)

What you are looking at is the hidden debt that all countries are happy to leave off the official figures, such as PFI and Pensions. They all do it. And it can only be sustained by getting people to pay in at one end, in order to fund the payout at the other, except that the liabilities outstrip the assets many times over.

In simple terms, every working person in this country is being broken on the wheel of high taxation, in order to support what are unsustainable levels of public spending. I ask you: when will it end? When will the people turn around and say "enough is enough"?

My answer is that this is a bubble which will one day burst. Irresistible inflationary pressures are working on the World's major economies. One day, the money will run out and there will be rampant inflation that will make Germany in the 1930's look like a picnic in the park.