The Great RecessionIn 1929, the United States faced the onset of the Great Depression. As the final bell rang on Wall Street on what became known as “Black Tuesday,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell thirteen percent and the next day, another ten percent. It was the start of one of the worst decades in American history. Over the next four years, unemployment will skyrocket from three percent to twenty-five percent. Across the country, citizens faced fear of economic uncertainty and the onslaught of poverty. Americans today face similar economic uncertainty. One of the biggest challenges facing the United States is the economic crisis. In early 2002, the United States of America entered an economic recession that left many observers uncertain of what was to come. This economic equation has many variables, and the U.S. government is struggling to determine how to prioritize these variables to produce the most effective results. The economic situation is like a patient who arrives at the hospital after being stabbed twenty times and bleeding from multiple wounds. Wounds must be accessible and prioritized for treatment to be effective. The United States is bleeding money from domestic wounds such as a crippled Social Security program and an insolvent Medicare system. These injuries are the result of insufficient funding and misuse of funds over the past decades. As for external injuries, they can be attributed to deficit spending and the government's attempt to manipulate the natural ebbs and flows of a free market economy. This has proven to be a toxic combination for the US economy which may not be able to recover from its bad patch...... middle of paper ...... taking on debt to maintain the economy afloat, the government is simply digging a deeper hole. This current level of spending is unsustainable. When this spending deficit ends, people will feel the pain of trying to claw their way out of the huge hole that government spending has created. As a result of this deadly economic concoction, the United States economy is on the brink of collapse. If the United States government persists on this unsustainable path of unfunded liabilities and deficit spending, it could lead to the end of the American democratic experiment. Thomas Jefferson once said, “Error of opinion can be tolerated where reason is free to combat it.” It appears that reason has left the minds of those in power within the United States government and their error of opinion could lead to the downfall of one of the greatest nations in history.