The US currently has $30,395,962,543,534.33 in debt and a GDP of ~$20,953,030,000,000.00 coupled with rising interest rates and record inflation. I think that's the "leader's gamble" to be really concerned about.
By this reasoning, it's irresponsible for a leader of a country that is not the US, to pin its economy on this "funny money" that it cannot print, but that others can.
Which is what El Salvador did untill recently. They still do, but no longer exclusively.
> By this reasoning, it's irresponsible for a leader of a country that is not the US, to pin its economy on this "funny money" that it cannot print, but that others can.
Yes, yes indeed. That is a terrible idea. Though there are circumstances when it might not be the most terrible of terrible ideas and the alternative is worse. But no sane country that is not already in dire straits should do that.
The fundamental difference is that the US is the currency issuer of the USD, and that the USD is still overwhelmingly a reserve and trade currency for other states.
Neither of these are true for El Salvador and BTC.
Oh it's another case of Libertarians deceptively portraying national "debt" as the same as personal debt.
There are plenty of countries with a higher national "debt" ratio that provide much better quality of life to the bottom 95% of the population than the US.
I'm exclusively talking about sovereign debt, I am not talking about personal debt at all.
The problem the US has is that it is one of the largest creditors of its own liabilities. The US prints its own money to issue itself debt with it. History's biggest ponzi.
National "debt" is not debt at all and doesn't work like a person going to the bank and loaning money. There are plenty of countries with higher national debt / GDP ratio than the US and doing better than the US in terms of quality of life.
Yes there are things that happen when they do that, but it is functionally impossible for the US to run out of dollars.