Well there is a financial crisis. The CDO's the mortagage backed securities and the financial stocks are in a slump. But note that it does bring the world economy to its knees and most americans are not the loosers in this. American economy is going into recession but on a YTD basis for the month of Jan american stock market is the least effected compared to Europe and Asian markets.
A lot of people here are showing the per person debt that is accumulated by americans but note that just less than a decacde before the same americans were facing a crisis that they would have eliminated all the debt because of the budget surpluses. This would have caused some other financial problems for people who have invested in the Government bonds.
The debt that is seen is most external debt as america does not have a concept of internal and external debt. India too has a massive amount of debt and also runs huge deficits in the budgets in India most of debt is held by Indians in the form of Postal Savings, RBI Bonds etc so all in all even with the massive indian population the debt per person is massive in India when an internal and external debt is considered.
