The Danger of a Global Double Dip Recession Is Real
The deficits we face are a dagger pointing at the heart of the American economy
Photo by Oliver Quillia for CNBC.com
The entire 43,000 page federal budget in two eight-foot tall towers of paper on the set of CNBC's "Street Signs" with Erin Burnett.
The modern world has for centuries been dominated economically, intellectually, and physically by the civilization that arose in Western Europe in the wake of the Renaissance and Reformation and spread across the Atlantic.
Will that one day be seen as a passing phenomenon doomed to ascend ever upward and then slowly fizzle out like a firework?
Total liabilities and unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security were about $62 trillion at the end of the last fiscal year, tripling from the year 2000, according to the calculations of former Comptroller General David Walker.
Sixty-two trillion dollars is $200,000 per person and $500,000-plus for the average household. As Walker put it, the problem with these trust funds is "you can't trust them [and] they're not funded." Therefore, he asserts, we ought to count them as a liability, which would bring the debt-to-GDP ratio to 91 percent.
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