When you don't talk about a problem, it can rear up and can kill you.

That's why former congressman Patrick Kennedy came out about his addiction after crashing into a traffic barrier on Capitol Hill back in 2006. And why he's just written a book about mental illness and addiction, centered on his own family's relationship with these issues.

Few families are more secretive than the Kennedys. The Kennedys started out bootlegging in the ‘20s. And there's any number of conspiracies surrounding their dynasty, fame, and fortune.

He discusses the “pathology of silence” that happens when a family ignores a problem for so long, pretending like everything's normal. Meanwhile, you've got an addict in the house destroying the lives of himself and his family. That isn't normal. It's a disease, but nobody talks about it. Silence is the status quo.

Our economy suffers from its own addiction, as do we.

We've been addicted to debt and Keynesian economic policies since the 1970s. By a substantial margin, debt has grown faster than the economy for four decades.

And now, we're facing the greatest debt crisis since the 1930s…

Surprise… surprise… surprise.

This is the very nature of addiction, and denial of said addiction.

EVERY addict goes through denial. And ALL debt bubbles in history have ended in periods of austerity, when we're finally forced to admit our problems… get the addiction out of our system… re-balance, get straight, and grow again.

That is the picture of our economy over the past several years. We've been trying to cheat the system. And now it's coming back on us.

It's human nature to strive to be better, and have a better life. But we also have a natural inclination to cheat to accelerate the trend.

Instead of getting ahead through hard work, innovation, and better technologies and systems, we use questionable strategies like borrowing more than we can afford.