[Phillips:] We don't have to tell you the recent fluctuations in our market combined with Europe's debt crisis mean that we're in uncertain economic times. Our country's debt is growing at a dramatic rate, now, topping more than $13 trillion. This chart shows our debt in red. And to the nation's Gross Domestic Product in green. You can see that the debt is more than 3.5 times our GDP, which has some economists saying we could be primed for what's called a double dip recession. Jeff Rosensweg is a finance professor at Emery University, and maybe we should start with the double dip recession and explain what that means. It sounds like I should panic.
[Prof. Jeff Rosensweg, Finance, Emory University:] Sounds like you should go to the ice-cream store.
[Phillips:] Yes, that would be a lot easier.
[Rosensweg:] That wouldn't cost as much. We were cruising along with a lot of nice growth, and then, we fell down into a recession, meaning the economy went down and receded down to be 2008, the first half of 2009. But then we've been growing for almost the last year. People really don't feel it. So, a lot of pain in the job market, but we've been growing. But now, as we see all this trouble in Europe, et cetera, we see the stock market reflecting some of that panic, there's a lot of fear we might go down again. So, it's a little bit like a "W." We went down, we're coming up, and will we go down into a double dip, another recession, another falling down the beach.
[Phillips:] So, what does that mean for us? OK. You've explained the double dip. We're talking $13 trillion. I mean, that is just that number is unimaginable. What does that mean to you, to me, to everybody in the studio?
[Rosensweg:] Yes. Everyone is worried about it because it's such a big number. And it means that take yourself, take myself, it's over $42,000 of government debt, just federal government debt per person in the U.S. So, let's say someone there has a family of four. It's $170,000 of debt per family of four.
[Phillips:] This is the same type of problem that we saw in Greece.
[Rosensweg:] Yes.
[Phillips:] We saw those protests.
[Rosensweg:] That's right.
[Phillips:] We saw people getting violent. We saw the thousands and thousands of people fill the streets. I mean, you remember these pictures. We followed this for days. You know, are we headed down this road?
[Rosensweg:] We could be headed down that road. The thing is we're not there yet. The difference with the U.S. is we have, by far, the world's biggest economy. So, yes, we do have the biggest debt, $13 trillion. But, as a ratio of our income, you know, our GDP, our total production, our debt is less than to Greece or Italy, not that those are countries I like to compare to, but, in other words, if we can get a handle on our problem even over the next three, four years, we will be okay. It's really your debt compared to your income that makes the difference. We're in a great economy.
[Phillips:] So, give me an analogy that put that in perspective for you.
[Rosensweg:] Yes. Let's say you have a mortgage that's $100,000, that's your debt, but let's say your income is $50,000. You're OK. But let's say in this bad economy, they cut you to halftime and you only get half that salary, all of a sudden, that debt, you can't handle it. So, it's really your debt compared to that income. So, what we need to do is grow our incomes. We already got the $13 trillion debt. It's there. The mortgage is there, for instance. We got to do everything we can as a nation to grow the income.
[Phillips:] What else can we do?
[Rosensweg:] We really have no choice. You know, people say, Kyra, why don't we pay off the debt. We're not going to pay off $13 trillion. We can't go to families and say, give us $170,000 extra tax. We don't have it. We don't have it on our savings accounts.
[Phillips:] Our taxes are already going up.
[Rosensweg:] Exactly.
[Phillips:] And we're paying for two wars. We're paying for corruption on Wall Street. I mean, now, we got an oil disaster that we're paying for. I mean, how can we even think about paying down a debt?
[Rosensweg:] No, we really can't. What we need to do is grow the other half of equation, grow incomes, create jobs. You know, we have 15 million people unemployed, but we have 25 million people that are either unemployed or underemployed. People, like I said, that are part time and need a full-time job. People gave out looking for jobs, 25 million. So, you know, some people say, we got to get rid of this deficit. We got to raise taxes. That's the last thing we should do. If anything, we need to subsidize and cut taxes in order to create incentives for green energy, for insulating people's home so we wouldn't be dependent so much on foreign oil which often comes in from our enemies, on offshore drilling. We need to do anything we can to create jobs. Now, I've been complaining for 20 years about the government deficits and the debt, but right now, I want to say, it is jobs, jobs, jobs. Twenty-five million people are out there. I know that as a professor. People are hurting. If we can create income, we can handle the debt. We don't need to pay off the debt. We just have to get it under control over even a three or four-year horizon. But right now, we have 25 million people that are hurting. And if they're not working, they're not paying tax, and we're going to remain having a huge deficit.
[Phillips:] You mentioned offshore drilling. That's very controversial right now. That's going to be something we're going to be talking a lot about.
[Rosensweg:] We will talk about that another day, Kyra.
[Phillips:] That's a whole another segment. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. All right. Fallouts from this week's election primaries, the allegations are so serious that Democratic leaders are asking one South Carolina winner to drop out.