If you want to point fingers, start with statism

Without that promised growth, the United States will not be able to repay its debts. That’s the reason markets tumbled in recent weeks. Despite attempts by assorted pundits to pin the market collapse on the Tea Party and a haywire ratings downgrade by Standard & Poor’s, the stock markets around the world more likely reflect the fact that there’s a global government debt crisis.

But the data compiled by the McKinsey Global Institute show that global government borrowing by 2010 had already delivered plenty of trillions — $25-trillion since 2000, and $11-trillion over the last three years alone. During the 1990s boom decade government borrowing held steady at about 43% of global GDP. Last year borrowing soared to almost 70% of GDP, or $41-trillion, most of it racked up since 2007. Read more at opinion.financialpost.com