The Safest Bonds in the World

From MarketWatch:

According to the International Monetary Fund, only a handful of countries are really rock solid.
They include Australia and New Zealand, as well as the countries of Scandinavia — Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway.
While most developed countries have racked up huge debts, these guys have kept their liabilities small in relation to their economies, according to the IMF. They have well-funded public pension plans. A few have no net debts at all.
The country with the strongest finances? Norway.

I would say that all of those nations are closer to socialism than the United States under President Obama.  New Zealand and Australia show some of the same right-wing tendencies as the Republican Party, yet they still have stronger social safety nets than the United States. They are also commodity exporters. The Scandinavian countries are polar opposites from the GOP, and are well-run. 

I should emphasize that much of America's fiscal problems can be easily laid at the feet of the cut taxes-and-spend Republicans who have dominated U.S. politics since 1981.  The fact that two years after leading this country into a chasm, U.S. voters turned power in the House of Representatives back over to Republicans goes a long way to explaining how we got where we are at.  We as voters tend to get the government we deserve.  Americans are afraid to face the truth: we are living above our means and are profligate with resources, we borrow to maintain our standard-of-living, and we will see a dramatic decline in this standard-of-living if we don't cut back and start to pay our way.  We should hav made changes years ago, but the sooner we change, the better off we'll be.