James Keys and Tunde Ogunlana react to the report that the US national debt now exceeds the size of the US economy, measured as the gross domestic product, for the first time since right after World War II in 1946 and consider whether all the talk about how bad huge national debts were, which happened when the actual debt was tens of trillions of dollars lower than it is now, was just political posturing.  The guys then consider whether the US society is equipped to address slow moving problems like runaway debt, or even like climate change or forever chemical contamination.

US national debt is now bigger than the economy for first time since World War II (The Independent)

The real trouble with the US debt topping 100 percent of GDP (Atlantic Council)