"D.C. fault." That is a great description. Trying to redeem all those I.O.U.s will have an economic impact greater the the New Madrid quakes. The dislocation is liable to sink both parties and Washington.

And that's why it's so hard to talk to some people.
You say, "There's no money in the trust fund, it's all just I.O.U.s from the gov't to the gov't."

They say, "Yes there is money in the trust fund."

How can you continue that conversation?
It's a total waste of time.

It is a universe of deception. It grew harder to understand every year and is now impossible.

Our government regards numbers as Inconvenient Facts. One too big or too small is merely changed. A few words are written to prove the discarded number was wrong and the new one is correct. The words are filed away, it must all be done properly.

Governments do not have to follow accepted accounting practices and audits. They can and will say anything that might pacify the public.

The federal government itself has no idea of the cost of what they have promised to others: bond holders, pensioners, guarantees like FHA loans and FDIC, medical plans such as Medicaid, semi-obligations such as sustaining Fannie and Freddie.

The rot is equally deep in many state governments and some local. But they can't print money or create a phony bank like the Fed.

When I say a universe of deception consider a much simpler situation. How the EU got into the Greek debt crisis. Greece lied in order to keep borrowing in world markets. The increasing Greek debt could have been detected but nobody bothered or wanted to know.

The entire Social Security trust fund resides in a file cabinet:

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) -- The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.