Regarding the look of things to come for the wealthiest nation on earth, Barack Obama has said it succinctly that American people will expect “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.” He was not exaggerating. According to analysts, it will take years before the USA can recover from an economic meltdown. Some greedy people in the finance sector, as well as war freaks that can spend billions on invading another country in the pretext of unifying its people, have run the country to the ground. Unfortunately for the whole world, when America sneezes, practically the entire planet catches cold.

Obama is clearly stepping into the lion’s den. These budget deficits pose dangers in the long-term. It would be a Herculean effort to reduce them. His is a precarious situation because of all the problems he inherited from his predecessor whose few actions the US Congress did not even readily know, such as the entire military situation in Iraq that used up billions of taxpayers money. Huge deficits will burden even the current generation’s future grandchildren. America will no longer be the wealthiest empire that it once was.

It would, however, be a far cry from the situation where the US will find itself borrowing money. Tables will not be turned just yet. Maybe, never. The US will never reach the depths that poor countries find themselves in, mired in debt financing to the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. The blight of wealth is that, for the first time, the US might, just might, know how it is to be poor like how impoverished countries are forever chained to feel. Maybe, this is the age of reckoning.

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Via The New York Times