About 70% of the debt is held domestically, by things like mutual funds, pension funds, insurance funds, and a variety of private individuals.
well, i heard that even if you have fdic insurance it could take a long time to get reimbursed meanwhile you're about to run out of food and get kicked out for not paying rent. so in reality, you could end up in a bad situation anyway by trusting uncle sam even if he was not in debt.
About 30% of the debt is foreign, with the largest holders being Japan and China.
i don't get how one country "owes" another country money.
When we talk about printing money, they aren't actually printing physical cash. The Fed mainly creates new money by trading Treasury securities. This isn't something that can be done in secret.
but they are printing money and there's no way you can know how much exactly. no one can. maybe on weekends or holidays they go in and print a couple billion and give it to whoever. you wouldn't know.
And it doesn't bother you that the foundation of entire economy is shrouded in mystery and impossible to fully account for?
so then we agree that the printing presses can't be audited about how much money is coming off them?
So what do you think will happen? The US national debt will continue to increase unchecked until eventually we are paying our entire GDP just in interest payments. What then?
the government will lower the interest rates to 0 then. and if that's not enough they'll work out a repayment plan aka restructuring of debt. they might even file for bankruptcy protection so they can start the slate clean again. i'm sure there's some way they can get out of their problem. don't you?
You think investors and institutions are going to continue to lend us money when it's abundantly clear we will never pay them back?
no one needs to lend the us government money because they create the money in the first place. so they can create it instead of borrowing it. so people that lend the us government money don't make much sense to me. they don't need your money. they can print as much of it as they want.
What do you think happens when we default on trillions and trillions of dollars of debt and can't fund any government spending?
well, fighter jets are always going to be a top priority. whether manned or not, they'll keep getting developed and purchased by the armed forces. so there you go.
