Government Bond(age)
A stick figure wound in its own black coil on government-form blue, deficit in one corner and infinite surplus in the other — a perfect illusion, as the sheet says.
A figure drawn in white line, arms out, wrapped mid-torso in a black coil that could be a spring or a binding. The ground is that particular bureaucratic blue. In the corners the two numbers a state is always holding at once.
Deficit. Infinite surplus. A perfect illusion.
The title’s parenthesis does the rest of the work: bond as instrument, bondage as the wrap. The figure is not struggling. It is standing in the pose the coil allows, which is the joke and the diagram.