Will America go bankrupt? GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms

As a nation we are $40,000,000,000,000 in debt (not $8T as the government would have you believe) and growing.

We cook our books and do not report future liabilities on our official balance sheet. Social security and medicaid/medicare if not radically altered will cause the US to default on its loans or print money into hyperinflation. The US media is too lazy to report on this timebomb. And our elected politicians only care about the next election and not the next generation.

And Americans could seemingly care less, and won't care until the sh*t really hits the fan, which by then will be too late.

Here's an update though from the independent general accounting office's comptroller general. I've watched a couple of speeches from this guy, and my take is that he must have the most frustrating job in the world, knowing what he knows and not getting anyone to listen. He must go home at night, kiss his wife, kids and gold bars, and then resume work on the bunker.

GAO Chief Takes to Road, Warns Economic Disaster Looms Even As Many Candidates Avoid Issue

David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."

Walker doesn't want to make balancing the federal government's books sexy -- he just wants to make it politically palatable. He has committed to touring the nation through the 2008 elections, talking to anybody who will listen about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself, the "demographic tsunami" that will come when the baby boom generation begins retiring and the recklessness of borrowing money from foreign lenders to pay for the operation of the U.S. government.

Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.

A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.