When this issuance of debt eventually hits a ceiling, governments will need to sell more of it to foreigners, and that will result in foreigners possessing "a great share of our national funds [which will] render the pubic … tributary to them." And if all this comes to pass, as it inevitably must according to Hume, liberty is undone. With taxes at their limits paying interest on the debt, there is no room to absorb any kind of financial shock. Consequently, even more debt will be issued, "a continual taxation of the annuitants," which results in a government that has "mortgaged all its revenues [and that will] sink into a state of languor, inactivity and impotence."

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 288