Tick tick tick

Debt debt debt:

"Since one person's debt is another person's asset, the vast expansion of American debt in recent years theoretically could have been accompanied by an equivalent rise in American assets. But the U.S. is blessed with open and vibrant capital markets. With Americans simply refusing to save, the government has increasingly sold its debt to the central banks of our trading partners like Japan and China. To a large degree, then, the debts of American taxpayers are now the assets of Asian governments. If the U.S. Department of the Treasury simply becomes a funnel through which American tax dollars flow to foreign central banks, President Bush's ownership society could become more of an Asian phenomenon than an American one.

But don't expect to hear much about deficits or debt tomorrow night, or any time this week. Like the phrase 'Democracy in Iraq,' the words have simply evaporated from the Republican vocabulary."