To make it simple enough, without dispensing a lot more economic theory, there is no risk of a recession for one simple reason. At this time the US government is running a surplus. All the semantics about social security aside, its is a virtual impossibility for a serious financial meltdown when an economy of this size and sophistication is running a surplus. The surplus in this day and age is a great equalizer and the reason why most of the world will continue to send their money to this safe haven. Other governments can't get their houses in order so even if their fundamentals might be better on the whole, they suffer because you can't run deficits and compete effectively. European countries just don't seem to get this concept and Japan flat out ignores it. As long as our government continues to pay down its debt, or even just leaves it flat, there will be a bonus in lower interest rates to our economy and strong currency which despite its bad press at times is in almost all cases a positive for our economy. Right now we are in the mildest of recessions, just a bit of a balancing from overblown growth of recent years. Things will get quickly in balance because fundamentally speaking this economy is still incredibly solid. We have rarely had under 5% unemployment in our history, we have not had significant debt reduction before, our inflation is well below historical levels, interest rates are also at historical lows...its a dream situation. The only way things go bad is if these things turn around and as long as the government keeps running surpluses these factors should only tend to improve.