Our National Debt: A Crisis in the Making?

With our debt piling up at an astounding rate, this week the Treasury announced that the deficit grew at a 2.1 trillion dollar annual rate. Which raises the question: can a major country, such as the US, default on its debt? Then- how has the Fed performed during this economic crisis, and how soon till the economy starts groiwing?

Episode Segments:

This Week on Wall Street Our review of the week in the markets, with interviews from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. He believes that the worst of the recession is now behind us, but we have a long way to go before we will truly be out of the recession. In other words, before the economy puts in some solid growth.
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Can the US Go Broke? Robert Samuelson, the well know economic writer for the Washington Post, raises the question: can a major country, such as the US, default on its debt? With our debt piling up at an astounding rate, this week the Treasury announced that the deficit grew at a 2.1 trillion dollar annual rate. That’s four times larger than ever before: its no longer out of the question that we might not be able to pay the interest on our bonds. Derrick Halpenny, from The Bank of Tokyo looks at the possibility of new bubbles being created in the system.
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Assessing the Fed Jeffrey Lacker, President of the Richmond Federal Reserve Banks, discusses the performance of the Fed through the economic crisis. Finally a look at the week ahead, and how the economy is really doing.
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