[This is the first of two articles. I’ll write the second installment later this week, whether or not I get an answer to a question I asked the author of the article referenced below.]
[UPDATE: The follow-up article is at this link.]
A scary article was just published a few days ago, titled Is the United States Bankrupt? But it wasn’t the title that was scary to me; let’s face it, we see that title all the time, because it’s a sure-fire grabber that sells newspapers, magazines, and books, lickety-split. As I recall, the last time I saw that title was six or seven weeks ago in the grocery store checkout line... but I just can’t remember if it was gracing the front page of the Globe, the Weekly World News, or the National Enquirer.
In any case, it wasn’t the title that was scary this time. No, what was scary was who published it: The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review (in the July/August 2006 issue).
Its author, Laurence Kotlikoff, says the present value of our federal government’s future liabilities overwhelms the present value of future tax receipts. Bad news for our grandkids, in other words. Doomsday is right around the corner, just like all those books have been trying to tell us for at least the last forty years.
Having spent much of my career in corporate finance, consequently having become intimately familiar with discounted cash flow analysis (the key to which lies in the assumptions that lead to the end result), I went through the article carefully, looking for the key assumptions behind the present value calculations. What was assumed about the future tax inflows from 401Ks and IRAs? What was assumed about future economic growth, productivity growth, population growth? What was assumed about the fixed/variable/semivariable costs of government programs? Do they all really vary directly with GDP, or was that just a convenient way to simplify the financial model? Was it assumed that the debt would eventually have to be paid off? If so, when and why was it assumed that debt rollover would become impossible?
[A while back, I took a shot at predicting some possible outcomes two generations down the road; it could no doubt be improved, but it did reveal some not-so-gloomy potential outcomes.]
Anyway, the assumptions have a significant impact on the outcome, and I’ve already emphasized how important the answer to that last question is. All by itself, it could spell the difference between doomsday and dreamscape. In one case, our kids would have to come up with sufficient taxes to pay not just the interest on their T-bonds, but also the principal to eliminate them; in the other case, all they’d have to come up with is enough taxes to pay themselves the interest—and keep rolling their T-bonds over and over, content with their financial assets (some of it money, some of it T-bonds) and a low-inflation environment, just like we’re doing today.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the answers in the article. So I asked the author. Later this week, I’ll publish his response to my email, if I get one—along with a few of my comments, of course. [Click on the thumbnail below to see the questions I asked.]
Until then, here’s something to think about, from the late father of management, Peter Drucker [emphasis mine]:
First-year accounting students are taught that the balance sheet portrays the liquidation value of the enterprise and provides creditors with worst-case information. But enterprises are not normally run to be liquidated. They have to be managed as going concerns, that is, for wealth creation.
Guess what: Drucker's last two sentences also apply to nations, too. But some people apparently think my country will need to stop everything and liquidate its assets against its liabilities—sometime in the next generation or two. I disagree strongly, and I have some very serious questions for anyone who actually believes it.
In any case, Drucker was being polite. Here’s how I’d say it:
“Accountants count what’s easy to count—not what counts.”
