Here's a warning for the boomers. The 2007 Financial Report of the US Government has found that the ageing baby boomer generation and rising health costs are going to drag down the US economy. And debt is simply unsustainable!

"Simply said, holding revenues constant, required Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending and the related deficit financing costs will far exceed the Government's ability to pay," says the report. "Projections show that by 2070, total Government expenditures are projected to be 50 percent of GDP."

"If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and there would be talk about whether the company's management and directors needed a major shake-up," said Comptroller General David M. Walker, reports CFO.com.

What does this mean for boomers and 50-somethings? Simply, that they will start to lose their grip on power, says Paul Farrell at MarketWatch. The lid's been blown off.

"The generational war's exploding far earlier than the old fogies want. Yet, self-absorbed Aging Boomers remain in denial, ignoring the problems. And it's obvious from the evasive campaign rhetoric that politicians won't touch this killer 'third rail.' They hope a good fairy will wave a magical "deficits don't matter" wand and make the massive entitlement debt quietly disappear. But Millennials are waking up. And wising up. They now see how they're being conned. Soon they'll jar the Aging Boomers out of their denial. Moreover, the $51 trillion Social Security and Medicare debt is only part of the burden. Washington has become notorious at disguising how bad things really are. But add in other debt (government, consumer, mortgage, corporate), plus America's share of the debt hidden inside the $300 trillion in global derivatives, what Pimco's Bill Gross warns is a high-risk 'shadow' banking system, the ultimate time-bomb that could bring down the global economy. Add all that and you see how America's in debt way, way over our heads by more than $100 trillion. We've been living way beyond our means for too long. Today each one of our 300 million citizens is in debt by $330,000."

Let's fast forward to 2020 and the next President of the US, a gen Xer, launches a stinging attack on the boomers. "They had it better than their kids, and way better than their parents. They are a spoiled generation who had every whim catered for: hippies, yuppies, punks and dinks. And now they want us to support them. Look after them!! Well my fellow Americans, it's not happening. They should have made arrangements for retirement in their time, not ours."

All this suggests we might be entering an era of intergenerational tensions as Governments wrestle with spending allocations as the population ages. And it will get nasty.

As my good friend, Australian demographer Bernard Salt says, we might soon see Gen X comedians hitting a collective nerve with their anti boomer jokes: "What's the difference between a retired boomer and a leech? Leeches die quicker!"

It won't be long before jokes like that will bring the house down.