The narrative Wiggin spun out for me over lunch is repeated, nearly verbatim, by almost everyone in the gold community. "This is the blow-off phase for the Great Dollar Era. We're in an unsustainable trend right now," Wiggin told me, ticking off the miscalculations that have brought us to the brink of an economic apocalypse. To begin with, the U.S. has become the world's biggest debtor, with three outstanding obligations at alarming highs: consumer debt, or our mortgages and credit cards; the federal deficit; and our current account deficit with foreign countries. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Wiggin continued, has simply shifted one bubble -- the 90's bubble in stocks and bonds -- into another, in real estate and "overconsumption," or the American propensity to pay for an ever-more-lavish lifestyle on credit.

...The financial markets in 2001 and 2002 got crushed because of the dot-com bubble, and then we saw that again in 2006 and 2007. Expected revenues from rising house prices never materialized, because the housing market fell apart.
The country is addicted to these asset bubbles. And politicians, while making their budgets—it happens at all levels, at state, local, federal and with all the agencies—they kind of plan the spending based on anticipated revenues from these rising asset bubbles. But when the asset bubbles fall apart, when the housing bubble crashes, and when the stock market goes down, those revenues never materialize, but the spending continues.〔"Debt: America’s Bi-Partisan Blame Game." America’s Radio News. June 11, 2011. Republished by ''Business Insider''. ()〕