Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America's $16 trillion federal debt has escalated into a "death spiral, "as he told CNBC. 

And it could result in a depression so severe that he doesn't "think our civilization could survive it."

And Duncan is not alone in warning that the U.S. economy may go into a "death spiral." 

Since the recession, noted economists including Laurence Kotlikoff, a former member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, have come to similar conclusions. 

Kotlikoff estimates the true fiscal gap is $211 trillion when unfunded entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are included. 

However, while the debt crisis numbers are well known to most Americans, the economy hasn't suffered a major correction for almost 4 years.

So the questions remain: Is the threat of collapse for real? And if so, when? 

Full article at - http://moneymorning.com/ob/economist-richard-duncan-civilization-may-not-survive-death-spiral/

Ah, our wretched 21st century economy...

The problem is that the end of the world is usually looked upon with favorable light.  People want to see the end of the world.

More on topic:  Yea, the USA has a debt problem but no party will do anything that will actually give us a surplus.  Our political system has failed us and the Federal Reserve has only led us deeper into the collapse.  Revolution wouldn't be that bad besides the people dying.

And it's clear why!

Anarchy is the answer! imagine climbing the veins on the base of the Seers Towers.

You can fool some of the people some of the time.

But you can never fool everyone all of the time.

In response to Sethnintendo, I actually want to see the end of the world, too. The thought of people being alive and happy after I'm dead pisses me off.

As for the OP, are we expecting something like this or is this just a scare tactic for a political campaign to persuade people to vote a certain way or face the end of the world? Because I gotta tell you, I'm voting for the end of the world while I'm young enough to think of cool catch phrases.

I bet the Romans thought they were invincible too. But from the ashes of the global banking system something better will be built.

I am of the belief that the Nolan Batman trilogy focuses on the wanting for tearing the system down impulse found in humans. People want the revolution and the reset. The consequences of such is never pleasant. Plenty will die. If people now aren't doing what they need to, in order to maintain life and civilization, they certainly aren't when freed of the compulsions by the system to do so, and lacking the resources to do so. I saw this destructive impulse in Occupy, among numbers of people in it. And I see it political today by those who just want to burn the government to the ground.

For the deficit, both budget cuts and increasing taxes aren't doable politically in the United States.

I would think if it came down to that, the advanced economies would simply declare something akin to biblical "Jubilee," where everyone forgives everyone else's sovereign debt and just sort of starts clean.

It is easy to fix these problems but the solution requires something sadly missing in the United States, leadership ...

You have to start off by eliminating the number of government departments by merging departments with similar responsibilities and closing departments of questionable value. Job cuts would be involved in merged departments, mostly in administrative positions.

After that the size of government needs to be frozen (probably for a decade) while total costs can only increase at the rate of inflation. The population of the country has to grow, and the GDP of the country has to increase, in order to support the size of the government. Most of these departments will learn to "do more with less" as most private companies have, and over time will become remarkably efficient.

The tax code has to be simplified, and the average person should be able to do their taxes on one side of a single sheet of paper. Overall, taxes should increase because there will be massive reductions in subsidies, tax credits, deductions and loop-holes but the tax rates should be decreased.

The regulatory system needs to be simplified so that the average business doesn't have to worry about multiple regulatory standards set by multiple regulatory bodies.

Social spending should be reformed, and it makes far more sense to spend twice as much money for six months supporting and training the unemployed than it does paying them to do nothing for 2 years; and watching them become dependents on the system.

Oddly i agree with much of this. The question comes in with defining who needs to be cut and what needs to be done to make things simpler, as i'm generally pro-regulations (but agree that said regulations could be managed by one one-size-fits-all federal regulatory bureau which could enforce different regulations within states and between them)

Also its largely acknowledged by all sides that this needs to happen, but you see the tremendous political capital that needs to be mobilized to get anything done (e.g. the half-assed Affordable Care Act).

This is talking about debts, money and the like. Goods will be produced by companies, that at the moment work. Problem is, that both are entangled. But money exists because the government made rules for it. If the economy is in trouble only because of the financial system, the government has many ways to do something. Most of this will not be good for banks and other financial institutes, but as they produce nothing really valuable it will be acceptable in a situation of crisis.