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The federal government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac represents a huge financial tremor. These two institutions now issue 70% of Americans' mortgages. Their failure would have triggered a complete meltdown in housing and financial markets. So now Uncle Sam is on the hook for $5 trillion, consisting of corporate debt owed by those two institutions and mortgage debt guaranteed by them.

If only the government's total debt were that low. Uncle Sam, for all his righteous indignation, is, in fact, the father of all deceptive accounting. The government has arranged its budgeting to keep the great bulk of its liabilities off the books and out of sight.