[ptero]

"Broken Money" by Lyn Alden is a good engineering background. Then, for example, read one of many macro articles on fiscal dominance.

You do not have to read Lyn first, but without reading it on modern financial systems I personally would not understand most technical points in the current macro discussions.

[shadowerm]

Even then though, there is a giant global debit maturity wall from covid that needs refinancing at much higher interest rates that starts coming due in 2026 and 2027.

That is much sooner than fiscal dominance in the US. I suspect we can go to 100 trillion in debt at least without fiscal dominance. I suspect everyone will understand what fiscal dominance is in the 2030s though.

This liquidity problem from debt refinancing is much nearer.

[ptero]

To nitpick a bit. I see the fiscal dominance not as "even then" but as a "because of" the unsustainable debt levels.

With the US budget deficit over 35% there are fewer and fewer external parties willing to lend to the US at low rates. The government could reduce the spending (yeah), collect more taxes (raising taxes 50% across the board -- sure) or use fiscal dominance to lower the rates. Fiscal dominance could be done in a variety of ways, either directly (e.g., printing money and using it to buy own bonds) or indirectly (e.g., by printing money and requiring pension funds to hold some treasuries), but whatever way it is done, the increase in M2 that goes with it will devalue assets for an average person. This is not the future; this is already happening via various quantitative easing programs. That was a US-centric view; Western Europe is in a broadly similar state.

The beauty of fiscal dominance for politicians and MMT-subscribing economists is that it removes the liquidity problem from debt refinancing. The problem (and the quiet part that some forget about and say out loud) is that it requires capital controls.

Capital flow controls was something the US had naturally in the 1940s, when a major US fiscal dominance effort was last run. But this is not the state today. In the modern world where one can buy gold, bitcoin or any of 100+ currencies with a few keystrokes capital controls will be harder to enforce.

Next decade will likely be very interesting, at least from the financials viewpoint... My 2c.