Who needs reality TV when there’s the psychodrama of Donald Trump’s White House to keep us all entertained? As plot lines go, the falling out between Trump and Elon Musk was perhaps about as predictable as they come, but the sheer venom, speed and combustibility of the divorce has nevertheless proved utterly captivating.

Even the best of Hollywood scriptwriters would have struggled to do better. The stench of betrayal hangs heavy in the air, a veritable revenger’s tragedy of a drama.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the White House on May 30. The US is the beating heart of the global financial system, and if its debt markets go belly up they’ll take everyone else down with them.Credit: AP

Beneath it all, however, lies a rather more serious matter than the sight of two of the world’s richest and most powerful men breaking up and exchanging insults.

And it’s one that afflicts nearly all major high-income economies. Slowly but surely – and at varying speeds – they are all going bust. Yet few of them seem even capable of recognising it, let alone doing anything to correct it.

None more so than the United States, where the Congressional Budget Office last week estimated that Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” would add a further $US2.4 trillion ($3.7 trillion) to the national debt by 2034.

Let’s not take sides, but Musk was absolutely right when he described the bill as “a disgusting abomination”. It taxes far too little, and it spends far too much. It is hard to imagine a more reckless piece of make-believe.

Musk had backed Trump not just out of self-interest – more government contracts, protection of the electric vehicle mandate, personal aggrandisement and so on – but because he genuinely believed he could help stop the US from bankrupting itself.

This has proved a monumental conceit. The $US2........

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