One can imagine a bumper sticker that says, "Debt Happens!" But debt does not just happen, whether we are talking about national debt or personal debt. Debt is something that is deliberately entered into. An individual decides to go into debt by borrowing money, using a credit card, or buying something "on time." A nation also goes into debt by borrowing money.

So when a person wakes up one morning to find themselves up to their eyeballs in debt or when a nation wakes up to find itself in the same situation, the response to the statement, "Why America is in debt," is easy to answer. America is in debt because of borrowing.

As already stated, individuals are in debt because of borrowing money. Money can be borrowed directly from a financial institution to buy a house or car. Money can be borrowed from a business through buying something over time. Money can be borrowed by using a credit card and not paying off the balance each month. Or one can borrow money by using a credit card but pay it off each month with no financial consequences, no interest payments.

Continuing with personal debt, there are many drivers, but two that are primary. One is psychological or emotional. Americans buy "stuff" they don't need with money they don't have because it's important to look successful whether you are or not. Television advertising makes suckers of us all, convincing us that we will be much happier if we are more beautiful, sexier, and have cool stuff. Whatever they are pitching, we will be better people if we buy it.

The other driver, while also psychological/emotional, has a strong financial component. This driver was created by Alan Greenspan is his fore-doomed attempt to mitigate the consequences of the tech or dot com bubble. The idea was that we could buy our way out of the possibility of a recession. He should have left things alone and let us have a small and natural recession to clear out the dross left over from the dot com bust.

Instead, he dropped the prime rate to a new low. There were two immediate and negative consequences of this stupid move. The first was to hurt anyone and everyone who had savings or any other kind of interest-bearing investment. The returns on these savings and investments immediately dropped to below inflation. People lost money without doing anything.

The second thing that happened was that cheap money and cheap credit was introduced into the system. With money that cheap, you would be stupid not to borrow. So

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