The United States will resemble Italy in three years if politicians don't take serious measures to narrow deficits by 2013, says former National Economic Council director Lawrence Lindsey.

The United States is currently running a budget deficit of around 9 percent of gross domestic product, Lindsey tells CNBC.

"That's on the order of what Greece is running. The Italian budget deficit is much smaller than ours," he adds.
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"We have a little bit more time to deal with it because our debt to GDP ratio isn't as high. But the fundamentals of our budget are at least as bad as any of these European countries."

Turning to coordinated Central Bank actions around the world to flood liquidity into the global economy and ease tight credit conditions in Europe, Lindsey says the move as a good one, but not enough to solve the global economy's woes.

Lawrence Lindsey (Getty Images photo)

"The action was necessary, but it was hardly sufficient," Lindsey says.
"That is an idea that’s been talked about for months and months. It's a natural lever for them to pull."

Economists are worried that politicians are moving be too slow to fix the economy, leaving it vulnerable to external shocks, especially from a possible implosion in Europe.

"The worst-case scenario is that we allow the economy to sit in this non-recovery for so long that something comes along and causes that second recession,” says Ethan Harris, a former New York Fed staff economist, according to Bloomberg.

"Accidents happen. And if you’re growing at 1 to 2 percent, you’re just waiting for bad luck to hit."