One of the great mysteries of the world is how three hundred million people managed to run up quite such an enormous liability in only 250 years while still allowing their poor to go without education, housing or health-care. Evidently, a good deal of money was spent on vodka and cocaine but a considerable proportion was also frittered away spreading its principals across the world; upholding democracy by bank-rolling dictators of oil-bearing countries and supporting freedom of speech by carpet-bombing small tropical nations with opposing economic ideas. But just how did the United States manage to convince lenders to provide it with such eye-wateringly huge amounts of cash, and how did they successfully service such a large deficit for so long that those lenders are now too scared to stop