[peepeepoopoo3]

There's a little over $200 billion dollars left in the US treasury right now, we have higher debt-to-GDP than Greece did at the beginning of their sovereign debt crisis, AND we have persistent high inflation. Something has to give. You can't fight inflation and pursue monetary easing at the same time.

[jones6ofMont]

Fed can just print another 20 trillions. Treasury can mint a special 10T USD coin to payback FED. Nothing needs to give. As long as people have "faith" in USD, the music will continue...but those damn Yuan and Rubbles. Taht we need ro launch another Iraq war with China and Russia. They have WMD that we can blame on and get our boys there with poker cards - a version for the Russian and a version for the Chinese. Surely we can beat them as easily as Iraqis? Ignore Afghan - we always intended to replace Talebans with Talebans while we wash 10T USD for congress money laundry.

[sgammon]

i lost brain cells reading this

[carterschonwald]

The us debt is denominated in usd. Countries in the EU don’t have the same luxury.

[peepeepoopoo3]

You're proposing to print away the debt during a period of already high inflation. While you're technically correct that we can avoid default by printing more money, the practical consequences of monetizing the national debt right now, would be catastrophic hyperinflation.

[dragonwriter]

> You’re proposing to print away the debt during a period of already high inflation.

Current inflation isn’t that high (YoY is still high because its trailing), and if there is a recession, it will naturally fall faster, and easy money is the natural policy in those conditions, independent of debt concerns (which monetary policy generally is, that’s kind of the point of an independent central bank.)

[andrekandre]

  > we can avoid default by printing more money

isnt "printing" usually done through issuing bonds?

do those increase inflation?

[peepeepoopoo3]

The treasury takes on debt when it issues bonds, but the Federal Reserve expands the money supply when it buys those bonds. It's a two-step process.

[wahern]

Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio never stopped climbing; it peaked at over 200% in 2020. The crisis, meanwhile, was short-lived as the ratio per se was not among the most salient factors.

[csomar]

Greece crisis is short-lived? Greece never recovered from the crisis.

Employment in Greece in 2010: 4.6 million.

Employment in Greece now: around 4.0 million.

Sure the unemployment rate has gone "down". That's because the youth gave up and simply moved from Greece. The GDP per capita will improve because of that but their GDP in constant prices never recovered (and is around 2002-2004 levels).

[wahern]

The crisis itself pertained to bond defaults, and in particular the reverberations through the international financial system. But the extra context you've provided only drives home my point: facial nominal figure comparisons are worthless.

[peepeepoopoo3]

Geece had to massively increase taxes and implement austerity programs, to say nothing of the EU bailout. Since then, they've been able to survive on low interest rates. Low interest rates which are now gone, as the world is busy fighting inflation.

[wahern]

Inflation cuts both ways, eviscerating older debt. That's the whole reason for the present banking crisis. In any event, the debt-to-GDP ratio being higher than Greece's at the time of its debt crisis says absolutely nothing by itself about the U.S. situation. Pointing it out is a baseless, cheap insinuation.

[peepeepoopoo3]

Except it's not, because our interest rates are also in the same range as when their debt crisis began. Greece was fine at those debt levels until their bond yields hit 5%, at which point they entered into a self-reinforcing spiral of insolvency. The Federal Reserve is currently targeting interest rates above 5% to fight inflation.