I'd say it's pretty reasonable to worry about. In fact I'd say a crisis is an absolute certainty. The question is just how bad it will be. A few things to co

I'd say it's pretty reasonable to worry about. In fact I'd say a crisis is an absolute certainty. The question is just how bad it will be. A few things to consider... Borrowing - When people discuss the Debt (National and Private) they focus on the wrong thing which is "How are we going to pay this back?". That's an issue but the bigger issue is why we needed it. Borrowing is a wealth transfer from the future to the present. You're saying "I'm going to take this money from my future and use it now". So our economic growth in the last decade has been built on taking money from the future and combining it with our present output. So the real debt problem is we need to borrow to maintain the standard of living we've grown accustomed to and we can't borrow forever. Unrealistic Expectations - One of the results of the above borrowing is we've seen spectacular growth in the stock market. From 1971 to 1986 the Dow increased from 874 to 1912. From 1986 to 2001 the Dow increased from 1912 to 9811 (and that was off a high of over 10,000). Housing prices from 1896 to 1996 remained relatively the same (http://nyti.ms/TxoI4 http://nyti.ms/TxoI4) but then increased 100% between 1996 and 2006. So the asset value increases a whole generation has come to expect aren't normal and were driven by borrowing (look at the national debt increase for these same periods). In other words it isn't realistic to, for example, think a 401k will fully finance your retirement because stock values shouldn't grow that significantly. Crash Fallout - This is a simple one. As valuations fall so do people's perceived savings. People who thought they had a $300,000 house and $1 million in their 401(k) find they now have a $100,000 house and $200k in their 401(k). So they stop spending on luxuries for a long, long time to restore their savings. Demographic Shift - If you ever get the chance there's a very short audio book by a guy named Harry Dent called "The Great Debt Crisis" that's worth reading (Its $23 on Audible). He studies spending patterns of people by age. The argument he makes is we're at the end of a spending boom. People spend money from their early 20s until their kids graduate from college. Then they start to save. We're at the point where all the children of the Baby Boomers are graduating or are about to graduate college. At that point the Baby Boomers spending will drop dramatically. This is a problem because the Baby Boomers had far fewer children. So we're going to see a major fall from that. These four factors (along with other more minor ones) make me think we're going to see a major drop in the next decade.