$56000000,000,000 will the federal debt become yours?

• Author: Cheney, Glenn A.
• Position: ECONOMY - David Walker

Can you imagine running an organization with more than $56 trillion in debt? The caveat: you can keep most of the total off your books--but it's still due. No one in their right mind would run up that much debt and pretend it's not there. Yet, that's exactly what the United States government is doing.

And, chief financial officers should be concerned since this overwhelming debt is bound to impact every U.S. business at some point.

On the federal books is a mere $9 trillion in red ink. But the true net deficit that is expected to accrue over the next 75 years is the kind of unfunded liability that companies following generally accepted accounting principles and state and local governments have to report--unlike the federal government.

And this was the amount due prior to the recent Emergency Economic Stabilization Act voted for in October that is expected to cost an additional $700 billion.

Though the government can keep $56 trillion off the books, it still has to be paid. But can it be paid? Economic growth won't pay it. Higher taxes won't pay it. Killing Social Security won't pay it. And selling more Treasury bonds to foreign investors likely won't pay it ... not much longer.

So now what?

It's what those in C-suites and boards of directors need to talk about. The U.S. government is rapidly approaching an inexorable fiscal crisis--one that can potentially touch off an economic crisis. Such crises cannot help but have a traumatic effect on every business in the nation.

There are some people who are trying to change this course, including former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. Walker resigned from his position as head of the General Accountability Office earlier this year to become president and chief executive officer of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an organization "dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of several key challenges threatening America's future, and to accelerating action on them."

Walker made the move, he says, because he saw the U.S. at a critical crossroads. "I believe that I will be able to make a bigger difference in my new job than if I had remained in my prior position," he says.

Indeed, Walker's new role allows him more flexibility and more discretionary financial resources to help increase public attention and accelerate action on what he views as "fiscal and other key sustainability challenges facing our country,"

Walker has been continuing the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" that he started while at the helm of GAO. He is touring the country, sounding the alarm and suggesting a last-ditch solution that depends, perilously, on nonpartisan cooperation among elected officials working together with...