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 As the world watches in horror as the financial nightmares in Greece, Spain and Portugal unfold, most Americans are oblivious to the fact that a great day of financial reckoning is soon coming to the United States as well. The truth is that the United States is not "the richest nation in the world" anymore. What the United States actually has become is the biggest debtor in the history of the planet. In our lust for the "good life" and the American Dream we have spent ourselves into a financial black hole from which there is no escape. U.S. government spending has been wildly out of control for decades, but over recent months Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their cohorts have taken things to an entirely new level. Certainly it cannot be denied that the Bush administration badly mismanaged America's national finances, but budget deficits during his administration were generally in the three to five hundred billion dollar range. (Read More.....)
 Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession". What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious. (Read More.....)
 This is the time of year when hundreds of thousands of young Americans graduate from institutions of higher learning all across the United States. This horde of fresh-faced young Americans is full of knowledge and ambition and is ready to get good jobs and start living the American Dream. But there is only one problem. There are not nearly enough good jobs for them. In fact, there have not been nearly enough good jobs for college graduates for a number of years. As a result, record numbers of college graduates are moving back in with mommy and daddy and are taking jobs as Wal-Mart greeters, Chinese food delivery people and video store clerks. But it is tough to blame them when the job openings simply are not there. It is hard to describe how depressing it can be for a young person to send out dozens of resumes day after day and not receive a single positive response. The reality is that the real world is a lot different from the safe environment of college. In fact, 2010 college graduates are finding out that the real world can be downright cruel. (Read More.....)
 Over the past several decades, most of the major industrialized nations have been borrowing and spending unprecedented amounts of money. This has enabled them to greatly stimulate their economies, and has allowed hundreds of millions of people to live fabulous lifestyles. But there is a problem when nations try to live beyond their means for decades. A big problem. The problem is called debt. Right now the world is facing a sovereign debt crisis that threatens to throw the entire globe into a very, very deep recession. In fact, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King recently called this the worst financial crisis in history. While that might be a bit dramatic (at least at this point), the reality is that the situation in the financial world is becoming very, very serious. You see, debts have to be paid back eventually. All over the globe, national governments are trying to deal with debt and interest on debt that has piled up so dramatically that they don't know what to do about it. For example, the United States is in a complete mess. The U.S. national debt is scheduled to soon surpass 13 trillion dollars. To get an idea of how big that is, if you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars. It would take you more than 403,000 years to spend 13 trillion dollars. Are you starting to get the picture? This gigantic debt that the U.S. government has accumulated is about to turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare. It is literally impossible for the United States to ever pay the national debt off, and as it continues to explode it will increasingly become a crushing load that the U.S. economy can simply not support. (Read More.....)
 As the U.S. media trumpets the arrival of a great "economic recovery", the vast majority of the American people are completely unaware that the entire U.S. financial system is caught in a hopeless death spiral. The cold, hard reality is that any temporary "green shoots" that we are seeing in the economy are there not because our politicians have figured out a way to deal with the financial problems of the United States. No, the "green shoots" are there because our politicians have flooded our economy with a whole bunch more debt. Debt will stimulate an economy for a little while, but the truth is that any new debt just makes our long-term economic problems even worse. But now we are caught in a never ending cycle of debt, and there is no hope that we will ever be able to pay if off. Most Americans do not understand economics, but if they did, they would realize that the American Dream is literally being destroyed right in front of their eyes. Not only have we squandered the vast amounts of wealth that our forefathers left us, we have also piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. We have created an economic nightmare from which there is no escape. Our children and our grandchildren will be trapped in it for their entire lives. What we have done to future generations of Americans is absolutely criminal. (Read More.....)
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