[skhunted]

The government isn’t spending money it doesn’t have. It does spend money it borrows from lenders. The lenders think it is a relatively safe investment since they keep lending money to the U.S. government.

I’ve been hearing doom and gloom about the deficit for 50 years. It primarily occurs when a Democrat is President and subsides when a Republican is President. This not a reference to OP. I state this to try to give some perspective to those who read this.

[thelastparadise]

Debt to GDP over 100% and growing exponentially is new (outside WWII).

[skhunted]

The debt to gdp ratio in Japan has been well over 100% for decades. In fact it is over 200%. What matters is the ability to service the debt. Those buying U.S. government securities are not as alarmed as you. Do you have reason to believe that they are lacking in knowledge/understanding of the situation and are wrong? They could be making huge mistakes with their willingness to lend but I don’t know enough about this stuff to decide if that is the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_Japan

[thelastparadise]

Yes and Japan's economy has been extremely stagnant in that time.

[TimMeade]

The government is borrowing the majority of the funds from the FED. From itself. They are printing it and loaning it to themselves.

[skhunted]

You don’t understand how these things work. The FED conducts auctions for securities that entities purchase. Without entities buying the securities there would be no money for the government to borrow.

[gattis]

except the biggest buyer is our own social security fund

[skhunted]

Biggest single buyer. It’s an investment that SS makes. They could instead buy securities of other governments but U.S. securities have been the safest to purchase. Without SS do you think the U.S. would not be able to borrow as much as it does?