Greenspan Worried about National Debt... I Think

Alan Greenspan uses a lot of big fancy words and hard sentences, so I'm going to translate for us common people.

"The resolution of our current account deficit and household debt burdens does not strike me as overly worrisome, but that is certainly not the case for our fiscal deficit."

Y'all out there at home, keep spending money. But y'all in Congress, stop it, already.

"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances."

We're gonna be screwed for awhile.

"We do however, seem to be undergoing what is likely, in the end, to be a one-time shift in the degree of globalization and innovation that has temporarily altered the specific calibrations of those criteria."

Seriously, we are probably permanently screwed.

"Should globalization continue unfettered and thereby create an ever-more flexible international financial system, history suggests that current account imbalances will be defused with modest risk of disruption," he said. "The greater the degree of ... flexibility, the less the risk of a crisis."

The trade balance isn't too bad, as long as those damn forigners keep buying our stuff.

"Households ... do not appear to be faced with significant financial strain."

Quit your bitching and go out and buy some stuff that you don't need. After all, it will help keep the terrorists away.