Between ObamaCare, Iran and last quarter's uptick in U.S. economic growth, taxpayers these days may be distracted from several dangers to come. But households from the United States to Europe and Japan may soon face fiscal shocks worse than any market crash.
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Of course these measures won't return the world's top economies to sustainable levels of debt. That could be achieved only through significant economic growth (the good way) or, as the IMF puts it, "by repudiating public debt or inflating it away" (the bad way). In October the IMF floated a bold idea that didn't get the attention it deserved: lowering sovereign debt levels through a one-off tax on private wealth.

As applied to the euro zone, the IMF claims that a 10% levy on households' positive net worth would bring public debt levels back to pre-financial crisis levels. Such a tax sounds crazy, but recall what happened in euro-zone country Cyprus this year: Holders of bank accounts larger than 100,000 euros had to incur losses of up to 100% on their savings above that threshold, in order to "bail-in" the bankrupt Mediterranean state. Japanese households, sitting on one of the world's largest pools of savings, have particular reason to worry about their assets: At 240% of GDP, their country's public debt ratio is more than twice that of Cyprus when it defaulted.

From New York to London, Paris and beyond, powerful economic players are deciding that with an ever-deteriorating global fiscal outlook, conventional levels and methods of taxation will no longer suffice. That makes weapons of mass wealth destruction—such as the IMF's one-off capital levy, Cyprus's bank deposit confiscation, or outright sovereign defaults—likelier by the day.