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I’ve been wondering, do we ever have to actually pay it off?
Seriously, who’s going to call for it, China?
1. They need us more than we need them
2. They have stolen so much intellectual property that we shouldn’t even pay a penny until that is completely sorted out.

I’ve been wondering, do we ever have to actually pay it off? Seriously, who’s going to call for it, China?

This is a common misconception. The vast majority of US debt is held by Americans. A large chunk is so-called "inter-governmental" holdings, i.e. The Social Security trust fund, wherein we have spent the payroll taxes into the general fund and filled the "trust fund" with T-bills. Another big chunk is held by the Fed, which some serious funny money given the Fed can basically create money since they control our fiat currency. A very large percentage of our debt is held by ordinary Americans as T-bills in pensions, retirement accounts and mutual funds.

China only owns about $1 trillion in US debt. Japan owns the most at $1.2 trillion. So, defaulting on the debt would be a minor inconvenience to China, but downright catastrophic to the United States. In addition to wiping out trillions in American savings, it would destroy the fiscal reputation of the dollar and eliminate its status as the de facto reserve currency of the world, as well as the closely related benchmark currency for trading oil.

Who Owns the US National Debt?

We loan it to ourselves via the Fed. It’s all vapor. Very little of our national debt is owed to anyone. It’s mostly bits in a computer.

Makes my head hurt thinking about it. The fact is - national debt is a preprogrammed inflation/purchasing power over 30-50 years in the future. That is all it is from what I can tell. PRINT PRINT PRINT .......,

“They have stolen so much intellectual property that we shouldn’t even pay a penny until that is completely sorted out.”

That’s actually something I’ve written to Congress about. Not my own reps, they are probably owned by the CCP, but others.

We should charge off the value of all the intellectual property they have stolen, as best we can evaluate it, against the debt held by China. You stole a billion dollar semiconductor? Cha-ching. You stole billions in military tech? Cha-ching. And so on. And fine them every time we detect an attempted hack on our infrastructure or financial institutions. Run it through a special court. Let them try to defend it or blame it on ‘rogues’. The only outcomes are bad for them.

We only have to cover the yearly interest payments, and at close to zero percent which is where the Fed is holding rates, it’s reasonable even with $27 Trillion in total debt.

Now, when interest rates eventually start to rise to hold off galloping inflation (which is coming sooner or later), watch those interest payments gobble up more and more of the yearly federal budget. A debt of $40 Trillion (and that’s also coming sooner or later) financed at 4% will demand a yearly payment of $1.6 TRILLION.