America's never had such high national debt heading into an economic shock(fortune.com)
27 pointsby ndsipa_pomu3 hours ago6 comments
  • Horatius7710 minutes ago
    Sad part is that, you can basically pick any random date over the past 50 years and this headline would ring true at that time. Our debt always seems to be at an all time high.
  • xrdan hour ago
    What is the hedge for this? Digging a really deep hole somewhere?
    • lumost20 minutes ago
      Hedging against currency collapse is notoriously difficult. But a reasonable set of hedges are assets that will have value regardless of currency changeovers. Eg housing, land, gold etc.
  • gavinray3 hours ago
    As an American, I hear "8 trillion dollars in debt" and it seems like monopoly money.

    Nobody lets you borrow 8 trillion dollars without paying some of it back.

    As far as I'm concerned, it's a made-up number, it's only gotten bigger every moment I've been alive, and nothing ever comes of it.

    When the universe dies, the US national debt will be at one gajillion...

    • blitzar3 hours ago
      Actually bill clinton paid some of it back (and created 22 million new jobs and an internship).

      also the us debt is 38 trillion

      • gavinray2 hours ago

          > also the us debt is 38 trillion
        It's sort of like being given one fine that's $100, and one fine that's $250 billion.

        You may as well keep increasing the number of second fine, because in no earthly circumstance will I ever be able to pay it back.

        • coldteaan hour ago
          >You may as well keep increasing the number of second fine, because in no earthly circumstance will I ever be able to pay it back.

          When that's the case, you'd be surprised what happens when the breaking point comes.

          Or do you think countries haven't gone bankrupt before?

      • rationalist3 hours ago
        also the U.S. unfunded liabilities is over 100 trillion*

        * That was the number that I first heard, but a quick search shows it's estimated anywhere from 80 trillion to 210 trillion dollars.

      • quickthrowman2 hours ago
        Clinton didn’t do much of anything to pay down the total amount of outstanding debt, but he (and Congress!) did have positive effects by balancing the government’s budget. Outstanding US government debt chart from FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

        The budget was balanced and/or a surplus for the years from 1997-2001, which meant a lot less money was borrowed (or fewer bonds were sold, depending on how you want to look at it.)

        The percentage of public debt to GDP also fell substantially from 1993-2000, which is a better metric than gross debt levels anyways. Here’s a chart of that from FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

    • liveoneggs35 minutes ago
      it means we gave $8T to someone and slowly pay it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLQlOK3AWSs

    • rcxdude3 hours ago
      The US government does spent a pretty large amount of its budget paying some of the debt back. More now that there's been multiple brinkmanship games of threatening a default for political points.
      • blitzar2 hours ago
        paying off one credit card with another credit card doesnt really pass the threshold of "paying some of the debt back"
      • rationalist3 hours ago
        The interest on the debt alone, is 1 trillion dollars a year.
        • rcxdude3 hours ago
          And that's at basically the lowest interest you can possibly get a loan.
          • rationalist3 hours ago
            The U.S. GDP is about 31 trillion, so 3 percent of that isn't bad, as long as we can continue to grow more than that, forever.

            Federal Outlays: Interest as Percent of Gross Domestic Product (FYOIGDA188S) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S

            Although according the the article, the interest payments account for one fifth of revenue, projected to be one quarter in ten years.

            • coldteaan hour ago
              >as long as we can continue to grow more than that, forever.

              "Being chased while on foot by a pack of hungry cheetahs is not that bad, as long as we can keep our distance"

              • kelseyfrog29 minutes ago
                You also have to understand that the foundation of money is debt in the sense that if we paid back all the debt, money wouldn't continue to exist. The sum total of debt exceeds the total quantity of money.
            • izacus2 hours ago
              The core of the issue is that the new debt isn't taken at low 3% interest right? So the servicing costs are rising faster than the economy is growing.
    • 2 hours ago
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  • zamalek2 hours ago
    An yet people will die on the hill of "republican economics." I truly can't understand it.
  • JohnnyLarue27 minutes ago
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