Put it on my grandaughter's tab, thanks

In 2003, Dick Cheney famously claimed "Ronald Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and, truth be told, for almost forty years the United States has lived beyond its means in every fashion and the bill has never come due. Even today, when the consensus is that the financial crisis has been driven in large part by innovations that have perpetuated the underlying imbalance in world consumption, the United States is able to borrow money at almost 0% interest so we can continue to consume more than we produce.

Will the bill ever come due?

No one knows, but clearly we are punting on the problem altogether and leaving it to posterity to figure out. Today I read an Op-Ed in the New York Times that basically takes the national debt and puts it into personal terms.