What follows is an update to our recent essay - America, poised for a hyperinflationary event? - including an update to our supporting metrics through December 2010. We're calling it a Roadmap to an inflation supernova in America, this essay elaborating on the dynamics and possible triggers behind the supernova. Not the only way America could get there, but if present trends continue, a roadmap that we think should be high on the list. Let's get right to it...

The U.S. government borrows and spends, running up its debt obligations, ad infinitum. At trend growth of 1.5 times U.S. net private savings and rising, such borrow and spend policies are increasingly beyond the means of America to finance the obligations...

Foreign investors have though over the last clutch of years stepped into the financing mix in a big way, bailing America out...

Underpinning this foreign demand for U.S. government securities are what we call "print and buy" countries - the mercantilist-minded, exporting-driven trading partners of America in Asia and the emerging markets plus the dollar-based, oil-producing countries of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. They are the countries of the world whose central banks buy U.S. dollars collected by their export businesses, by printing their own money with which to do it, and with those dollars turn around and buy U.S. government securities, not because they necessarily consider them good investments, but primarily because the U.S. government securities market is currently the only U.S. dollar repository big enough to take the bid. In so doing, they keep their currencies weak and their export driven economies strong...

More charts and commentary continued at http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelpollaro/2011/03/17/america-poised-for-a-hyperinflationary-event-the-roadmap/