Yes, that's not a misprint. It's trillions -- with a "t"! Here is the quote from Fisher's speech a few days ago:
Richard Fisher is the somewhat hawkish governor of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. He said, "speaking solely in my own capacity," (in other words, he wasn't speaking as an official voice for his fellow Fed governors) that "the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security... comes to $99.2 trillion over the infinite horizon. " As if that figure isn't staggering enough, he continues:
This comes to $1.3 million per family of four - over 25 times the average household's income....No combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, though, will change the total borne by current and future generations....We know from centuries of evidence in countless economies, from ancient Rome to today's Zimbabwe, that running the printing press to pay off today's bills leads to much worse problems later on. The inflation that results from the flood of money into the economy turns out to be far worse than the fiscal pain those countries hoped to avoid.
