reaganator, the usa is on an unsustainable path and obama is not interested in changing the trajectory.
but, one thing to keep in mind is that the UK, Japan and the EU are in worse shape than the US, if you take the size of their banking sectors into account. the size of the banks is important because they hold so much gov’t debt. a sovereign debt crisis, becomes a banking crisis, which increases the scale of the sovereign debt crisis... it is a vicious positive feedback loop (europe is already in this loop)
because of america’s (relative to the economy) smaller banks, and because the usa so far is the world reserve currency, it is more likely that one of the other major economic entities will collapse first
the endgame for all of the usa, uk, japan and eu is weimar, IF central bankers like bernanke are in charge. If the USA is lucky, one of the others will go first, and the lesson will be learned.
remember, during the depression, additional weimars didn’t happen because everyone had the example of what happened to germany a few years earlier