Honestly I think this country is too divisive to fail. We'll see out our mother if need be. I am not too worried about the debt, or deficit, cuz in all honesty, well think of some shit sandwich that our government will tell china, and china will smile and say just buy our shit, and pay us back whenever.
Regarding politics:
Pass some shit that yields moral values
GO health care
GO financial reform
GO Energy Bill
If we don't allocate the money that way, some dick will just spend it on a war, corporate/upper class tax breaks, or killing mexicans. The debt ain't going down, don't believe someone when they say they are going to balance anything.
Look at the gold standard, didn't work anymore, it wasn't valued incorrectly or wrong, it just wasn't profitable to go off of. Toss it out.
That will happen again, all the countries will be in severe debt, no one will want to give up anything.
A new valuation system will be born, the IMF will change its clothes, and we'll be chugging along. Thats the beauty of it, money isn't actually anything.
No one is going to say "Well, we are in a lot of trouble, so lets just let the whole world fall into chaos" (seeing as how this is a world wide issue). There will be some mutually agreed upon, obscure system slapped together to marginalize and separate the debt from aspects of countries currencies (should that be a plural) and no one will say peep or the world goes in the shitter.
A lot of people say they want the world to go into the shitter, but its pretty hard to trade what you got now, to go to that.
So in the mean time, instead of squabbling over the debt and deficit, just get whatever the fuck we can, so when we have to take a cold hard look at things, it will at least be there.