Quote from: Silberman on October 10, 2021, 09:42:09 PM

What I wonder is what comes next?

When considering the US national debt, then there are only two possibilities for the long term: It increases or it decreases.

The last time the US government turned a surplus and the debt decreased was in 2001. We were in a relatively small deficit until causing a constant small increase in the debt until the financial crash of 2008, when the deficit hit record levels. The deficit decreased from ~$1.5 trillion to ~$0.5 trillion between 2008 and 2016, before increasing every year under Trump up to $1 trillion again. Then COVID hit and the deficit surged to over $3 trillion. The fall out from COVID and associated spending, as well as the legacy of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, means that the deficit is projected to come back down to $1.5 trillion and slowly increase to $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years. But then all we need is another financial crisis or other major event and the deficit will be even higher.

Knowing all this, I can't see how the debt is going to be brought under control any time soon. To even just eliminate the deficit and break even, the US government would have to decrease spending massively on everything from education to healthcare to infrastructure to salaries to pensions to social security to the military... you name it. Every sector would take a massive hit, and widespread job losses would worsen the economy even more. And that would just be to stop the debt growing. To actually start reducing the debt would be another thing altogether.

And so the only real outcome is the debt continues to increase. As a percentage of GDP, out debt is over 130%. During the Greek financial crisis back in 2010, their debt-to-GDP ratio was 150%. It will only be a couple of years before we surpass those levels. The question is how long will the rest of the world continue to have faith in a currency which, as you say, is turning in to monopoly money.