Warning signs are everywhere — most of them carefully phrased and nuanced, but warnings, nevertheless. Greece and, closer to home, California are painful reminders of what could happen. CNBC is reporting that the Dow is repeating patterns that prevailed just before the Great Depression. The U.S. workforce suffered one its sharpest declines ever — a drop of 652,000 — in June. Economists claim that “wages are flirting with deflation.” It’s hard to find good news on the financial front. Now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its “Long-Term Budget Outlook” to confirm what people already feared: The national debt is devastating for the future of America. According to the CBO, “the federal government has been recording the largest budget deficits, as a share of the economy, since the end of World War II.” As a result, the CBO paints a very bleak picture of our nation’s future prospects. Further, as the world’s remaining superpower, this country’s terrible financial condition affects all other nations — a fact that makes the CBO report even more alarming.

Sadly, Shaw’s dismal picture is not sobering enough. Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the CBO, noted that the nation’s debt to GDP surged from 40 percent to 62 percent in just two years.

To compound the alarm, the CBO admits to understating the severity of the problem because its report does not include the negative impact that “substantial amounts of additional federal debt” would have on other aspects of the nation’s economy. Read more at www.americanthinker.com