I'm sorry but you're wrong on just about everything here.

1. While I don't know the articles you speak of you can't blame commentators for being off on predictions if the Government is doing everything it can to goose the economy. You say the national debt is a small amount of total debt and that's true. But the governments of the world have also been taking other steps like printing money and artificially keeping interest rates down (at 0 in fact). These are things that could help the economy recover but they are also things that would put off a crisis if it was coming.

2. No one would suggest putting money in your mattress because money loses value. Take a look at the dollar index: http://bit.ly/qO0F7X So the dollar has lost about 35% of its value since 2001