The National Debt Crisis: America's Armageddon

A call to action regarding the United States’ mounting national debt, as well as a general manifesto of conservative principles.

Franco, a veteran of the Air Force and a retired credit analyst, tackles the worrisome issue of national debt in his debut. With the debt on track to top $20 trillion by 2017, the author predicts that the annual interest alone, approximately $1 trillion, will be enough to strangle the economy. Indeed, Franco’s focus on the pernicious effects of interest is what distinguishes this analysis from the many other books devoted to the debt. He concedes that the 2008 Federal Reserve bond-buying program, which manufactured lower interest rates, successfully stimulated commerce and arrested a recession. However, he says that very same program will inevitably saddle the Fed with massive losses when it’s forced to unload bonds at a loss. Also, as interest rates inevitably rise, the national debt will become insurmountable, he asserts. Ultimately, Franco’s prognosis is dark, foreseeing sovereign default, the implosion of the Fed, and irreversible economic decline. The first 118 pages are entirely devoted to discussion of the debt, but then the book goes further afield, touching upon a broad spectrum of issues that include Israel, voter identification, the death penalty, abortion, the defects of the English language, and the “lunacy” of mental illness as a legal defense, to list only a few. The heart of the book is characterized by meticulous rigor, but these later sections seem more like digressive, unnecessary asides. That said, although the book’s economic predictions are dreary, readers are spared any hectoring. In fact, the tone is often surprisingly light, even when delivering the grimmest news: “Try to visualize the disaster facing our country if our government takes no action on the debt crisis, and this scenario plays out continuously for another twenty-one years, through 2043. Ugh!”

An uneven book, but one that presents a well-reasoned introduction to the national debt and the problems it poses to the country’s future fiscal health.