News that the national debt has risen above $40 trillion resonated like a ringing bell in my mind. It registered that America is 16 times deeper in its fiscal hole than it was when I first reported on this chronic ailment back in the late 1980s.

I’ve just reread one of my dispatches from Wall Street to Fleet Street, written in early 1989, when the $2.6 trillion debt and related alarm over the $155 billion annual budget deficit were causing ructions between President George H.W. Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.