Wealth Wire

Is the US Worse Off Than Greece?

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Posted by Adam Sharp -

Analysts in the US like to point out how bad Europe's debt problems are. What they don't often mention is that America's own problems are arguably even worse.
Chart by Sudden Debt, along with this commentary:

Not fair to compare the US to Greece, you say?  Correct, because the figure for Greece is for the general government, i.e. it includes all local and municipal budgets, whereas for the US it involves the federal government only.

In other words, the real picture is even worse than it looks in the graph.
DC-heavyweight James Baker recently weighed in on the issue:

"The United States of America, if we didn't have the dollar as the de facto reserve currency of the world, we'd be Greece," former Treasury Secretary James Baker told CNN Sunday. "I mean, we are broke, bankrupt. Really bankrupt."

The question is: How much time does the dollar's reserve-currency status buy America? And how much longer will the dollar remain the reserve currency, with Bernanke & co. printing like mad?