Before reading the next paragraph, you might want to open the front door, so that you will be able to run unimpeded into the streets, screaming your head off.

The US Government is now that country's largest borrower, lender, insurer, car maker and guarantor against risks. American governments, State and Federal, are the nation's largest employer. Government spending now amounts to 26 percent of the US economy, the largest share since World War II ended. The Government sets interest rates for savers, and has chosen zero as a suitable rate.

Worse than all of that, if anything could be, Uncle Sam has not a single plan in hand to change any of those dynamics. Indeed, if President Obama's health care plan goes through, it will effectively put him in charge of another industry.

The figures are beyond staggering. According to the New York Times, a keen supporter of big government, the Obama administration has committed $12.5 trillion - that's right, $12.5 trillion - to support the industries it now runs, about as much as the national debt already was. If I have the maths right, that's a commitment to spend about $42,000 per American person.

The largest programmes break down as follows:

• $4.8 trillion was committed for a guarantee to investors in money market funds, short-term borrowing for the funds, and loans to allow banks and investors to buy commercial paper, ie corporate debt, in which money market funds are major investors. Because corporate debt is not directly regulated by the US Government, it is able to pay a reasonable rate of interest and is doing fairly well. No money market funds have closed.

• $3.2 trillion has been made available for short-term loans, guarantees on bank debt and deposit accounts, and insurance against losses for Citigroup and Bank of America. A further $290 billion has been committed for direct investment in banks. This is the one area in which a return of some kind has been achieved, as banks have paid back a considerable amount of the money they have borrowed. The taxpayer has made a healthy profit on loans repaid, but remains on the hook for the two largest banks. Government has no plan - and, some would say, no desire - to unwind its investments.

• Up to $2 trillion has been committed to provide low-cost financing to help buyers of troubled mortgage securities. This programme has apparently not yet started, leaving all the toxic assets in all the balance sheets of the banks that held them before the trouble began.

• $1.9 trillion has been committed to direct investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a programme to buy mortgage securities from the two companies. A further $50 billion is available in incentives to modify and refinance mortgages. The Fed has also contributed money it doesn't have to ease the problem of bad mortgages. It has bought more than $700 billion of mortgage-backed securities and has said that it will buy a further $550 billion by next February. House prices appear to have hit the bottom and have begun rising in most US cities.

• $183 billion has been committed for direct investments in AIG, lines of credit and the purchase of troubled assets that AIG had guaranteed. Although the company is slowly paying back some of the debt by selling pieces of itself, it seems a long shot that the Government will walk away whole, given the crippling rate of interest that AIG has been asked to pay.

• $83 billion has been committed in loans to General Motors and Chrysler and their suppliers. About $5 billion was spent on the "cash for clunkers" programme.

Some context is probably in order.

• $12.5 trillion is about 500 times as much as the loss of the World Trade Centre cost the insurance industry.

• The US economy, one way and another, produces about $12 trillion of value a year. So, in context, if the same situation were to apply to you, it's as if you had borrowed a year's gross salary, without giving any kind of collateral or arranging a repayment schedule. The difference is, of course, that no one in the world would lend you a year's salary under those conditions. In that the average annual US alary hovers around $35,000 a year, every US citizen has effectively been given such a loan, which will have to be repaid through taxes or the devaluing effects of inflation.

• Global wealth is a little over $100 trillion. The US national debt, when all these programmes are running at full speed, will exceed $20 trillion.

• Bermuda's GDP per person is about twice that of the US, and our current borrowing much lower. Had the Bermuda Government been faced with a similar situation, it would have had to borrow $2 billion (at $42,000 per Bermudian).

If there could be a worse possible outcome to the recession, it's hard to think of one, particularly since employment in the US keeps falling. The big question that no one can answer is: would matters have become this bad if the Government had done nothing? Although a recession might have cost more jobs, would it have wrought such damage to the US balance sheet? It certainly would not have created the intergenerational tax bill that today's children and their children and their children will face.

Whatever your political persuasion, these facts should chill you to the bone. It took Europe 1,000 years for most of its citizens to become wards of state. The US is less than 250 years old, and the greatest part of the damage occurred since January. Chingers, as they say.