First, I ask why we are in the dangerous situation that we are in? I believe a large percentage of the blame is due to a profound lack of leadership and economic comprehension on the part of our elected government officials. Additionally, a negative savings rate, a high national debt, and an astronomical amount of unfunded liabilities for this county pose a very serious long-term financial crisis that we cannot possibly spend our way out of.

The apparent lack of leadership is the most frightening aspect of this entire situation. I have no doubts that if the American people understood the far-reaching implications of the negative savings rate, the national debt, and the unfunded liabilities they would start to change not only their spending habits, but would be willing to work with the government to help change the government's spending. The fact that President Obama is now speaking about the potential of a trillion dollar deficit for this year is a good sign; however, I have serious concerns about his support for massive government bailouts and stimulus packages which have the potential to increase the cost of items through inflation and will only pile on to our long term national debt. Remember the old adage reminding you to not dig yourself a deeper hole while trying to escape? Likewise, when you spend more money than you have and get into a financial turmoil, increasing your spending will not get you of the problems no matter how much money you spend, or print. In fact, it could very well make the financial situation impossible to escape unscathed which is what I fear could happen to this great nation.

Adding to the leadership void, for the first time since the Great Depression we have a negative personal savings rate meaning Americans, on average, spend more than they make. In fact, according to a 2008 Newsweek article, "The average household owes 20 percent more than it makes each year." Obviously, a country that spends more than it makes cannot sustain itself over a long period of time.

Along with the negative personal savings rate, we have a very large national debt. In fact, the national debt was estimated to be at $10,630,368,179,010 at the time I wrote this column. According to the Concord Coalition, this would equal more than 73% of the Gross Domestic Product in the United States and your share would be about $35,000 if the debt was divided equally among every United States citizen. I certainly hope my share of that bill never comes to me through the United States Postal Service.

In addition to the leadership deficit, and the insanely large national debt, our unfunded liabilities total well over 53 trillion dollars according to the new film "I.O.U.S.A". The unfunded liabilities have the very real potential to sink our economy within the next forty years. This is why I am completely dumbfounded to hear people talk about America being the richest country in the world. Whenever I have debt that I have no reasonable plan to pay back, I do not consider myself rich. In fact, I should probably consider drastically cutting my spending and stop throwing money around recklessly. On the other hand, the government manages to increase their workforce when current economic conditions force private businesses to make drastic cuts in their workforce to survive. To conclude, the time to address the unfunded liabilities is now because it will be too late when we are forced to start paying for them and no one will loan us any additional funds.

Now is the time to address this lack of leadership, that has our economy in a stranglehold, by increasing your personal savings rate, and requesting our elected officials to finally endeavor to deal with our huge national debt, and our future potential debilitating unfunded liabilities which could have the very frightening consequence of collapsing this great nation's economy.