Page 10 - Debt Level News Today

of the turmoil on wall street has been triggered by fears over the european debt crisis and the anemic economies. and richard quest, one of the best people to turn to when we want perspective on the global economy. he joins us from london. what happened in the european markets today? >> reporter: the europeans went down initially and then down further and they rallied with wall street. we closed down 1% in london, and paris 1%, and frankfurt, once again the german market is being cream...

and hello and good morning to you all. millions of americans are in the grip right now of a massive heat wave. we will tell you which states are getting hit by this heat wave and there is a danger zone here, folks. well let you know how long this will last. also, a real power workout. people are producing energy by expending their own. well tell you how this works. also, really one of our favorite stories of the day here. caped crusaders taking to the streets in one northeastern to...

Track to get to 120%. the rising blue line is our projected debt level. we reach greek levels of debt in just 10 years. this is why we need to fix the problem now, before it gets worse. on those graphs is the assumption that interest rates wont go sky high. >> they are at historically -- or relatively low rates. if interest rate guess up 1, 2, 5 percentage point, we are then on the fast track to the poor house, as opposed to a medium speed amtrak, as opposeed to a fast train. and the government ...

Track to get to 120%. the rising blue line is our projected debt level. we reach greek levels of debt in just 10 years. this is why we need to fix the problem now, before it gets worse. on those graphs is the assumption that interest rates wont go sky high. >> they are at historically -- or relatively low rates. if interest rate guess up 1, 2, 5 percentage point, we are then on the fast track to the poor house, as opposed to a medium speed amtrak, as opposeed to a fast train. and the government ...

Believe there are. you are obviously not running for office but we should be taking all of the claims with a grain of salt because we just have to get through some of the overhang we have been through on the kind of debt problem? >> yes. again, weve got two challenge. one is we are still leveraging. we have a fragile housing market. we have balance sheets that are not healthy again. the excess consumption is not coming back so we have to sell more to people in the rest of the world and we have s...

They dont cut entitlements as much as possible, they want to start putting up people to challenge them in the primaries. tucker, how do you think this might change things? >> i hope they stay true to their word. medicare and medicaid have grown more than 75 percent in the last ten years. the adult play here is to look at the debt. if youre an investor, thinking about investing in the united states, your singular concern, your main concern, is the debt level. its too big. the country is broke. an...

And hes got this idea he calls the big society. which is that were all in together and have to work together. this is his big political idea. its not really working as a political message. hes got to get that working next year to deal with that idea that hes thatcher. >> let me put it in perspective. things arent that much worse. draw a comparison for us. how much are things worse here than in the united states? >> i think things are petr. the big uk problem was we had a very big deficit in 2009...

Because nobody wants to vote for the debt level. a lot of senate democrats are concerned because they think it can hurt them. nobody expects at the end of the day boehner or republicans can actually use, consequences are too severe rattling the markets and world economy if they think, hey, wait a minute, these guys will inch close to the cliff. its a game of chicken but nobody thinks either side is sincere. a poll we put up earlier, donald trump now tied for the lead according to one cnn poll....

Terms of your safety and it goes from level one ald goes up to seven. and as you go up in each category, the debt level raises ten fold. level five, where we were at before, that was on par with the three mile incident of 1979. now they say fukushima is up there with 1986. what kind of consequences are there as a result of this? level 5, according to this scale, they call it an accident with wider consequences. several deaths can occur at a level 5 and severe damage to the reactor core. ill adva...

>> this time of year we often see these hurnlg temperature swings driven by a jet stream moving from the winter mode to the summer mode. the battle between the warm and the cold is whats helping to fuel these severe storms. >> reporter: forecasters wash the danger is not over yet. a strong front is expected to move across the next section of the country over the next couple days, bringing potential for dangerous weather to about 40 million people across 20 states. francis coe, nbc news. the go...