There is no reason to expect that renewed efforts at federal budget deficit reduction will result in anything more than the usual smoke and mirrors, further increasing, not reducing, long-term U.S. sovereign-solvency risk. In reality, the U.S. economy has not recovered, and no recovery is pending. Consumer liquidity remains severely impaired, and broad business activity continues to falter anew. As a result. the actual federal budget deficit going forward will be much worse than the relatively rosy numbers being used as the basis for government negotiations

- John Williams, www.shadwostats.com