Photo of Oleg Deripaska courtesy of Wikipedia

On Friday, Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska noted on his Telegram channel that the US economy is presently in a very precarious position.

He claimed that at present, the economy cannot endure the nation’s massive government debt, combined with its extravagant spending.

The Russian billionaire said, “Reckless militarization, sanctions against everyone, and military adventures around the world have already cost this country almost $33 trillion,” however he did not cite a source for the figure.

He went on to assert the US is presently as close to a bankruptcy of its public finances as it has ever been, and it does not have a lot of options to rescue its situation.

He said, “Printing more money is useless. Therefore, they will quietly discuss how to raise the debt ceiling in Congress.”

“Lots of heads will roll this spring in Washington,” he said, adding however, that this could bring peace in 2025.

The founder of Rusal, the second-largest aluminum producer in the world, noted that the government in DC is also confronting a banking crisis which is endangering roughly $17 trillion of unsecured banking deposits.

Unnamed sources earlier in the week told Bloomberg that the US Treasury Department is examining if federal authorities have sufficient emergency powers to temporarily insure deposits of bank customers for more than the current $250,000 limit on FDIC insurance on most accounts. The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which counts among its membership, banks with assets of as much as $100 billion, has been seeking such a measure by regulators.

The current banking crisis was set off by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month, which was seized by regulators after a surge in outflows triggered a liquidity crisis, forcing the bank to sell assets at a loss, and then seek to raise capital through additional investment.

The panic spread to Europe, where Switzerland’s second’ biggest bank, Credit Suisse, saw its outflows surge after a string of scandals and regulatory failures were capped by a report which admitted issues with its previous reporting. Eventually the Swiss government stepped in, brokering a deal with the nation’s largest bank – UBS, for the acquisition of Credit Suisse.

According to Deripaska, the acquisition of Credit Suisse will not mark the end of the banking crisis, but rather will only endanger UBS going forward.