What, me worry? Naaaah :(

Richard Posner summarizes the state of the economy:

The United States has a deeply wounded economy. At this writing, transfer payments by the government to individuals and families (Social Security, unemployment benefits, tax credits, etc.) exceed the taxes being collected from the household sector. At the same time, private investment net of depreciation is negative. This means that private savings are being borrowed by the government, combined with the government's foreign borrowing, and then transferred to households to enable them to maintain their accustomed level of consumption. People are saving more, but government borrowing overwhelms their saving, with the result that aggregate saving -- public plus private -- is negative. So: negative savings, negative private investment, an incredible ratio of household debt to disposable income (1.25 to 1, though down from 1.39 to 1 in 2007), massive government borrowing to finance private consumption -- not a nice combination.

I so wish that I had no intellectual or personal interest in these topics.  The ignorance would have made my life so much better!

Anyway, Posner continues with his assessment, and it is more of stuff that should keep us awake night after night:

it is small consolation that fiscal imprudence is bipartisan. The parties play leapfrog when it comes to spending. From the standpoint of economic policy, the United States has only one party, and it is the party of profligacy.

Anne Applebaum says that she has seen America's future and it is damn "Greecy":

Fortunately for American politicians, we do not have to submit our financial statistics to a European Commission, and thus we do not have to lie about them outright. But aside from our very large budget deficit—at the moment, 9.9 percent of GDP and climbing—we also have liabilities that are rarely acknowledged. The costs of Medicare and Medicaid are going up, as is the cost of veterans care. Markets assume that the vast debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are underwritten by the government, and someday the government might be called upon to pay them. No one is lying about these things, but no one is talking about them very much, either.

The good news is that the American government's bankruptcy is not on the front pages, and it won't be for many years: Our sheer size, our entrepreneurship, and our relatively open business culture will keep us going for a long time. But the Greek crisis shows that the combination of debt and political deadlock can be deadly. The catharsis we feel as we watch it unfold—that Aristotelian combination of pity and fear—should shock us far more than it has so far.