Esteemed economist Larry Kotlikoff warned the Senate Budget Committee last month that Greece is more solvent than the United States.
Kotlikoff identified the “fiscal gap” as the most important and telling measurement for gauging the health of an economy. The fiscal gap is “the difference between our government’s projected financial obligations and the present value of all projected future tax and other receipts.” The projected financial obligations are also known as “unfunded liabilities” such as future Social Security payouts. At $210 trillion, the U.S.’s fiscal gap is higher than many of the world’s economic basket cases.
Kotlikoff furthered: “The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke. Our nation’s broke, and it’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. Indeed, it may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece…”
Broke? Well, how did the U.S. essentially bankrupt itself? In short, politics and normalcy bias.
Explains economist Gary North (covering Kotlikoff’s address):
The rest of the world has been waking up to this fact. China has been making a push to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency for some time. And even “allies” like the UK are beginning to comprehend which way the wind is blowing. According to Financial Times, the UK has decided to become the first G7 nation to join China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This has riled the U.S.: “The Obama administration accused the UK of a ‘constant accommodation’ of China after Britain decided to join a new China-led financial institution that could rival the World Bank.”
http://www.voicesofliberty.com/artic...loped-nations/