If you think the current financial crisis is bad . . . You ain't seen nothin' yet.  Our country is heading toward a super-sub-prime crisis.  It may be just a matter of time before the federal government hits fiscal foreclosure.  For years the Treasury department has been using our nation's credit card to pay for everything, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollar of annual deficits.   This year's charge is already more than $400 billion.  To get us out of the current financial crisis, Treasury will be taking out a mammoth cash advance.  When will we reach our credit limit and what will happen then?   

Lack of transparency is at the root of our current crisis.  Banks and other financial institutions used off-balance sheet entities to hide their true financial risk from regulators and investors.  Purchasers of debt issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae assumed the debt was guaranteed by the U.S. government.   This expectation has lead foreign investors to demand that our government make these explicit guarantees implicit.  

Lack of transparency will also be at the core of our government's fiscal disaster.   The federal budget does not account for tens of trillions of dollars of off-balance-sheet and unfunded Social Security and Medicare commitments.   Retirees assume these explicit liabilities will be backed by the federal government and many are planning their retirements accordingly.   Future taxpayers may be obligated to guarantee the benefits promised.

We fortunate that the federal government is in a position to rescue us from the current financial crisis and that we have time to make changes to lessen the severity of our future federal fiscal crisis.  The possible size of the future disaster makes it very imprudent for us to wait until crisis is upon us to act.   

Each of us must be honest about what we can afford, personally and nationally.  We must start to pay attention to our personal and federal debt.  In addition to your own debt, your family's share of the national debt, including off-balance-sheet Social Security and Medicare promises, is almost a half of a million dollars.  Instead of ignoring this massive debt, you should educate yourself by reviewing:  www.truthin2008.org and www.truthinaccounting.org. 

Candidates for Congress and the presidency must be straight forward and tell us that our country is more than $54 trillion in the hole and they do not have a plan to stop digging, much less to start to fill the hole.  Candidates should provide an honest calculation of the short- and long-term costs of every campaign promise they make.  They should also present a realistic plan on how such promises will be paid for and discuss how much further in debt such promises would put us. 

Fortunately, the presidential candidates are talking about change.  But change must start with the truth.