When other countries no longer accept debt denominated in dollars, but want it denominated in their currency (or gold).
Never mind how much other countries owe the US. I’d like to see a chart on CNN showing how much countries A, B, C and D owe the US compared to how much the US owes those same countries. Cancel the difference and then see who is really indebted to whom.
Just print another $800 billion to send to Africa.
This is nothing new, it’s called monetizing the debt. My guess is that we’ll see a lot of this, and some benefits reduction and some higher taxes. I don’t think we’ll see a Latin American situation, although if we keep importing Latin American values we may reach that tipping point as well.
I find the title of the article rather amusing. At what point do we go broke? Ha! Who in their right mind would think we haven’t been broke for years? We are approaching ten trillion in debt, and some people still think we are not broke? Just because we can print more money doesn’t mean we are a viable “enterprise”.
When the US is no longer a good investment.
What makes us a good investment?
- our free enterprise system.
- Capitalism.
- the productivity of our US workers.
- stability.
- a thriving middle class.
I would way at some time between 2016 and 2020.
The gold bugs love a thread like this. But the fact is, if the US defaults on it’s debt then the only commodity worth anything will be bullets.
You’ve all heard stories about banks that keep supporting their highest leveraged lendees, long after they’ve lost their creditworthiness. After a while, you’ve got to keep them afloat because you’ve got so much at stake.
The US Gov is that position. So many entities have lent it so much $$, that the impact of it defaulting would be unthinkable. This is especially the case when you think of all the US guarantees in return. If the Guaranteer in Chief, goes under, then everyone at the party will suddenly realize they’ve been dancing on the ledge of a skyscraper.
So they keep on feeding the Beast, ‘cause its cheaper to do that than to reap the whirlwind of consequences.
Few remember that the final straw that ultimately took down the Soviet Union was a simple inability to pay employees. There just plain wasn’t enough money to back paychecks, so the government shut down, and the component states went their separate ways.
We risk the same. Once there’s not enough money to pay up, those expecting payment will simply stop cooperating, and there will be no government.
Two terms of an Obama Presidency should just about do it.
Coming soon, since our politicians can’t figure out that the money they spend to buy votes has to come from somewhere.
The USA’s assets should exceed 100 trillion dollars or more. It’s hard to assess the value of all of the government owned land and natural resources.
Did we spend it all yet?
Actually the US is, in fact, repudiating or welshing, on part of its debt. It has been doing that for seven years. That is the effect of inflation or “devaluation” as they like to call it now.By manipulating the interest rates the effect is enhanced because borrowing rates stay nominally low and actually extremely low. Real borrowing rates are close to 0% or even negative.
What are people like us going to do when things finally do go kaput is what I’m wondering?
What do they say- if you owe the bank a hundred bucks, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion bucks, the bank has a problem.
If it all goes down badly, let the central banks try to collect. We still have ammo.