The struggling U.S. economy, held up by "artificial" stimulus, is not unlike a "drunk that keeps drinking," Ken Langone, former director of the New York Stock Exchange and co-founder of Fieldpoint Private Bank and Trust told CNBC Tuesday.
"We have not begun to take the cure," Langone said. "We should have taken the cure a couple years ago...we've prolonged it by the stimulus packages."
Langone also dismissed growing worries that the United States will slide into a second recession—chiefly because the banker doesn't believe the U.S. economy ever really recovered.
"It's not a double-dip—we never came out of it," Langone said. "We were artificially propped up."
"We've got a lot of problems to address and the sooner we get started...the better we're gonna be," he added.