Recently, the national debt (aka public debt) crossed the $30 trillion milestone, yet neither Wall Street nor Washington took note. But it did catch our attention and we want to recall why a young budget director was thumping on the Gipper's chest in the Oval Office photo below.

Namely, we were informing him of the distinctively unwelcome news that the $846 billion public debt we had inherited in December 1980 — which had been accumulated over 190 years by 39 presidents — was already surging within days of the Reagan inauguration. Accordingly, within a matter of just weeks there would be no choice but to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling above the dreaded $1 trillion mark.

Exactly 41 years later, the public debt — measured appropriately at market value — stands at $30.7 trillion, a figure 36-fold larger than the figure being discussed in the "conversation" below.

So here's what we mean by the boiling frog metaphor: At the time of the above photo, no one — and we do mean no one — in Washington or Wall Street thought that the public debt could be let run wild with impunity. That's because there were always unpleasant, near- and mid-term consequences.