George Orwell wrote that, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

You have probably heard confusing phrases like the trade deficit, the falling dollar, the national debt, unfunded liabilities and so on, which all sound vague and actuarial and vaguely - well, “not me.”

The reality behind these accounting phrases is perfectly monstrous.

When someone -- a foreigner, say -- loans money to the American government, what are they getting in return?

Well, they are getting promises of interest payments, and eventual repayment of the principal.

Where does your government get this money?

The government is not a business; it does not generate profits in the free market, so where does it get the money to repay its creditors?

Do you see where this is going?

Are you beginning to understand that it is not dollars that are being sold, or bonds, or agency debt, or treasuries, or anything like that.

Where is your government going to get the money to pay off its creditors?

It is not pieces of paper or contracts or computer bits that are being sold.

There is only one thing that the government has to sell.

Governments have only one asset that they can use as collateral.

Your leaders are selling you.