If you boil water without releasing any steam everything looks perfectly calm... until the entire pot explodes.

That's the huge risk with Japan's gargantuan debt load right now.

Frequently billed as a highly stable country, Japan's dark secret is that it should have exploded into a hyper-inflationary death spiral years ago.

Worse yet, it could easily take the U.S. financial system and U.S. dollar down with it. That's because the U.S. depends on Japan to fund its own debt binge.

We're not alone here. These concerns have been heavily informed by the research of Societe Generale. Japanese hyperinflation would be disastrous exactly because it goes against what most investors have been taught to expect.