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by slashdev
791 days ago
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The bill does eventually come due. You pay for the interest and the debt, either through taxes or money printing (hidden tax of inflation.) There's no free lunch. For Argentina, they were paying with money printing and that's why they had out of control inflation. So far the US is doing the same, and that's why inflation spiked. I think this is the long-term plan to finance the US debt. We're not going back to that 1-2% inflation. Probably 3-5% is the new normal. I agree with you that there's no magic number of debt to GDP where things just fall apart. But there is certainly a number where they do. We don't know it, and it will be different for each country. Japan is sitting at 263% right now and doing OK (not great, but OK.) Obviously debt weighs on future growth. This happens at the household level and at the company level and at the state level. That's well established. The US right now is spending more on interest than defense. And that will keep rising. I'm not saying it will cause the US to fall. But between eroding the dollar through inflation, and weaponzing it aginst other countries - I think it will lose its status as a reserve currency. Not overnight, but I do expect to live to see it happen. |
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Stop with the "printing money" non-sense: it is private banks where money is created, not central banks or governments.
* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...
* https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
And if you think inflation is bad, try deflation. If you think a fixed money supply is good:
* https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/10/the-great-depression-...
* https://archive.ph/FWKcL / https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...
* http://www.nber.org/chapters/c11482
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine
> I agree with you that there's no magic number of debt to GDP where things just fall apart. But there is certainly a number where they do.
"Certainly". Sure. The South Sea Bubble was in the 1720s, it is now 2024. Somehow the UK has managed to muddle through for three hundred years.
> We don't know it, and it will be different for each country. Japan is sitting at 263% right now and doing OK (not great, but OK.)
So the US debt can double to reach the current levels of Japan (or past levels of the UK) and nothing happen.
> The US right now is spending more on interest than defense.
And yet, as a percentage of GDP, it's not even as high as it was in the recent past:
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S
> And that will keep rising.
Unless it drops. Like it has in the past.
> I think it will lose its status as a reserve currency.
There is nothing to replace it with, so I find this doubtful.