It is obvious to anyone who pays attention that the U.S.A. is heading for an almighty fiscal crash. The cover headline on a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek sums it up:

Would you invest in a company that lost $2 trillion last year and has a net worth of negative $44 trillion?

(Though the accompanying article, by Mary Meeker, is sheer Pollyanna. “Investment in education,” indeed! As for “No one would recommend that USA Inc. follow a similar course of slashing, burning, and stiffing bondholders” — what, no one at all? Give me a call, Ms. Meeker.)

The odd thing is how little anyone seems to care. Fiscal blogger Gonzalo Lira caught the phenomenon in this mid-February posting shortly after the last (I think it was — who can keep up?) upward revision of the 2011 deficit number:

No one seems particularly concerned.
It’s as if it were happening to someone else — it’s as if it were happening to the Canadians, not to America … Why is no-one concerned about this fiasco which is the Federal government’s budget? Why is everyone buying the patently ridiculous notion that the American economy will “grow its way to prosperity, and out of debt”? Why is no one freaking out over the incredible monetization of the Federal government debt that is being carried out by Ben Bernanke and the Gnomes at the Federal Reserve?

Among the very least concerened are our lawmakers, most of them. I can’t bear to read the latest if-we-just-tweak-here-and-there-it’ll-all-come-right proposals from Washington — all parties.

State lawmakers are just as insouciant. Here’s Steve Levy, my county executive (the guy who, if the New York State Republican Party had a single functioning brain between the lot of them, might now be governor) on a report by something called the New York State Mandate Relief Redesign Team.

The status quo is comfortable for everyone but the taxpayers. The status quo doesn’t require making a difficult decision, casting a controversial vote or upsetting a special interest.
Unfortunately, the status quo is unsustainable — it’s really the Unsustainable Quo.
Mandate relief has been talked about for 20 years. At this stage, recommendations should have gone far beyond vague niceties … Serious ideas are out there — but where is the intestinal fortitude to take on the Unsustainable Quo?

Not in the nation’s legislative chambers, that’s for sure.