The casual complacency of the President of the United States, some Nobel Prize-winning economists, and other leading politicians and business leaders like Mr. Bloomberg, begs the big question: can a modern advanced democracy exercise sufficient financial self-discipline before external forces or inflation impose the ultimate fiscal crisis?

FORBES: 'We're Getting Away With It' Does Not Excuse Federal Borrowing To Infinity

But as investors grow cynical that any one plan can be an ultimate backstop for the crisis, eurozone borrowing costs have continued to soar and stocks have continued to react negatively.

FORBES: Goodbye January Effect and Other Superstitions

In past bailouts, including the Resolution Trust Corp. formed in 1989 to help resolve the savings-and-loan crisis, the ultimate taxpayer cost was magnitudes larger than originally projected.

FORBES: Magazine Article

That is why the ultimate result of the global credit crisis is a dollar crisis transmitted through the factory economies of Asia as well as Japan.

FORBES: Asia's Credit Squeeze

The ultimate solution to solving the IT manament crisis is to think of IT as the business of providing technology to our organization, not as the art of managing technology infrastructure.

FORBES: Eight Steps For Addressing the IT Management Crisis

The ultimate answer to "who blinks first" lies in understanding how this crisis has played out over the past two years.

CNN: On Greek economy, who will blink first?

Peter Churchouse, Hong Kong-based managing director of investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Asia, reckons that after the Crisis, fund managers will threaten recalcitrant companies with "the ultimate weapon": withdrawing investment.

CNN: THE REAL WORK BEGINS

They are willing to drive off the fiscal cliff if necessary, because chaos and crisis provide them with the pretext for more government intervention and control, which is their ultimate goal.

FORBES: Compromise Or Gridlock In Washington: Two Unplatable Alternatives