For all of the statistics and so-called facts being thrown around by this expert or that, trying to predict what is going to happen next in the economy, all you really have to know is one thing: the average private sector employee in the United States makes $55,000 per year including benefits and the average government employee makes $110,000.  Since the private sector of the economy is where everything is produced and the government is just a middle man redistributing money to places it thinks are better than where the money came from in the first place, it is not possible to sustain the cost for very long.  Fully, a third of what the government takes in it spends on paying overhead like employee benefits.  So the money it collects in taxes, or borrows, or prints is largely of no benefit to the economy at large.

In Greece, where 40% of the workforce is a government bureaucrat of some kind, they have hit the wall.  We are not far behind.  This is why world financial markets are so skittish lately and why there seems to be no real direction for the prices of stocks, bonds, and commodities. The world has entered a new phase of history where the Entitlement State that most countries including ours has build, one where people receive benefits that they pay nothing for and feel entitled to them, is collapsing.  Nobody wants to recognize this fact, so we keep papering over it, literally, with more and more printed money with nothing behind it while so-called experts give reasons why this is going to all work out. 

It's not.  It can't.

When the history of this phase is written in the future, they are going to wonder how we could have missed the signs of the end coming.  They are all around us.  Again, it doesn't take an expert to understand what is happening, just common sense.  Greece's debt is a microcosm of the problem everywhere; they are having trouble refinancing their debts, not unlike so many of us who are having problems paying off our credit cards.  We used to use our home's equity to borrow money to pay off high interest debts, but when home values tanked we were left with only hard options like trying to renegotiate balances.  When Greece hit the wall it was because no one wanted to lend them any more low-interest cash to finance their pay outs to citizens, for no work.  When your “bills” exceed your income the upkeep will be your downfall.  It's true for individuals and it is true for governments.

This is why you have to plan wisely and not rely on things magically getting better - if only you can wait that long.  They are not going to get markedly better for a very long time.  They could get much worse.  Therefore you need to build cash, convert it to gold which is going to soon become the de facto currency of the world, and make smart financial decisions based upon the world as it has become and not hoping for it to return to as it was.  It won't.