Living in a Country Determined to be Indebted

A lot of people ask me why I'm so fixated on this deficit thing; this "world running out of money thing." I'll tell you why: Because we're broke. And, pardon my French, being broke sucks.

Being broke means you don't have options. Being broke means you don't have influence. Being broke means you answer to someone who does have influence.

Being broke means someone else calling the shots -- not you with nothing in your wallet, someone else with something in his wallet. Because when you're broke, you're desperate, so you get what you can from whomever you can. You're so afraid of things getting worse, that you settle for terms that are just bad.

I know of what I speak. As a young man with an illness, I went into deep debt with abandon. I was as much an emotional wreck as a physical one. Disease does that. Being in hock does that too. Because creditors don't much care what made you broke, just that you are broke.

And they have your number, so they call your number — a lot. Because they know you are desperate, and you know you are desperate. It's as if you have "desperate" written all over you, and everyone avoids you.

Forget sucking up to you; consider yourself lucky if they even talk to you. Because, like I said, you're a loser.

And doesn't the United States of America know it? Because, you know something? We're broke. We're losers. We're an increasing laughing stock because we have no stock.

So we find ourselves in hock to those who are not in hock. Countries like China who know we need them; rich benefactors who know we depend on them. They are our sugar daddy, and it pains us to admit it; because we are broke, and there is nothing we can do about it.

As a young man, I remember vowing never to be so indebted. Now I find myself living in a country never so determined to be indebted.

It's as if from the highest levels we are begging to be beggars; failing to realize beggars can't be choosers. Yet we have a government which chooses to spend, even if it means the rest of us poor suckers are spent.

— Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on "Your World with Cavuto" and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com