reply on: Charted: U.S. National Debt, as a Percent of GDP (1900-2035P) \ stacker news ~econ

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147 sats \ 12 replies \ @Undisciplined 7h \ on: Charted: U.S. National Debt, as a Percent of GDP (1900-2035P) econ

Unlike after WWII, there's no credible plan to get that number back down.

44 sats \ 7 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 7h

The debt is the big, ugly secret everyone's ignoring. As long as people keep buying US bonds, no one's going to take this seriously. It's the same old song and dance in Europe... Now I finally get what that crooked Portuguese politician was on about: debt isn't something you pay off, it's something you juggle!

43 sats \ 6 replies \ @freetx 7h

They cannot pay the debt off....I don't mean that as a fiscal problem. Our money is debt (or, our debt *is money).

So paying off debt = destroy money. If they paid 50% of the debt off, that would be $17T in money wiped out (ie. massive deflationary collapse).

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

Until they get down to the couple of trillions dollars in actual specie.

Yeah, paying off the debt would necessitate a 90% contraction of the money supply. Although, the Treasury could always crank up the actual printer.

53 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 6h

Heres your choices:

Do nothing and let hyperinflation take over
Default on debt and deal with resulting wars
Somehow try to "pay down debt" (big unknown) and deal with 90% deflationary collapse
Transition to bitcoin standard and forget about it

49 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 6h

we should be able to cut federal budget to fiscal year 2019, i.e. pre Covid spending levels

That should trim 2 trillion annually?

update: paying down debt is unnecessary as long as we don't default on our bond payments

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

What happens to the holders of dollar denominated debt with the bitcoin plan? It seems like that's just a variant of one of the other three choices.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 6h

They will receive dollars that may not be worth much in 30 years.....they too should transition to bitcoin standard.

(btw, I just saw someone on twitter post a "BitBond" strategy that is clever. When bonds are sold, Treasury allocates 1% of funds raised into bitcoin and held in cold-storage. At maturity, Treasury pays back 99% fiat and the 1% BTC.....)

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40 sats \ 3 replies \ @freetx 7h

This is why I think a SBR is such a good idea....not for some silly notion that we will use bitcoin to "pay off the debt", rather a national SBR will encourage and greenlight everyone to adopt a bitcoin standard.

The only hope we really have is to "soft-land" everyone into a bitcoin standard, and let the debt and dollar just zoom away...

52 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 7h

This debt ratio today is embarrassing, at least in 1945 we could use a world war as an excuse for racking up debt

9 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

Clearly you're forgetting about the Global War on Terror. I'm sure that'll wrap up any day now and all the excessive spending will go away.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

I can't imagine there's going to be a soft landing on this. The wealth transfer as this debt gets defaulted on is going to be insane.