National debt surpasses $31T

https://www.foxnews.com/us/national-debt-surpasses-31-trillion

by mikece • 4 years ago

17 36 4 years ago

Railsify• 4 years ago

Hidden taxes, the debt and inflation are just hidden taxes.

In Argentina is common knowledge considering our inflation as a form of taxation that does not need the creation of a concrete tax law.

theandrewbailey• 4 years ago

I wonder what would happen if all the money going into government debt would go into businesses instead.

DDickson• 4 years ago

It did [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program

yucky3• 4 years ago

We didn't stop paying debt though, so that's not true. Also, a large part of why inflation is so high now is the PPP.

kennend34• 4 years ago

I think the far larger concern is what would happen should the US Dollar lose "reserve currency" status?

At this point it is probably the only thing holding the US dollar up?

It is easy to borrow when you hold the reserve currency, but once that is gone why would the world want to hold "dollars" anymore?

nine_zeros• 4 years ago

I think the far lager concern is what would happen should the US Dollar lose "reserve currency" status?

When (if) a replacement currency shows up, it's more likely that USD will continue to be "one of the primary reserve currencies" instead of getting completely yanked from central bank reserves all over the world. This gradual decline happened with British Pound around/after WW2 so it is not unprecedented.

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

At this point it is probably the only thing holding the US dollar up?

So by "the only thing holding the US dollar up" you mean "rapidly strengthening against pretty much every other currency on the planet", right?

kmlx• 4 years ago

rapidly strengthening against pretty much every other currency on the planet

that's only because of the inflation brought about by the disastrous economic response to covid, a response which ironically was initiated by the same politicians that are now claiming inflation needs to be brought down.

kennend34• 4 years ago

Dude.. it is the reserve currency.. when there are risks in the markets people RUN to it.

The same as when the markets are volatile people dump stocks and buy bonds.

Thanks for proving my point, that being a reserve currency gives you some pretty powerful special rights.

newaccount2021• 4 years ago

There is nothing that can supplant the dollar right now.

The Yuan is radioactive now that the Western world is compartmentalizing China.

The Euro may not even survive the next few years if energy, conflict and other issues take down the EU.

Japanese Yen? British Pound? No way.

What's left? Nothing really. The dollar is it, and everyone knows it.

badrabbit2• 4 years ago

Why would that be the only thing holding it up? The US military and the resulting stability if the US is keeping it up. The amount of debt is not an issue, its eventual ability to pay off the debt is and keep in mind a huge chunk of this debt is intragovernmental (different parts of the governmenr borrowing from treasury).

If the military weakens and/or the US is seen as very unstable or if for some reason defaults on its debt obligations, then it will lose reserve currency status.

Look at the Chinese RMB for example, their military is not all that tested and their stability hinges upon one guy Xi keeping power and they are fairly new to having a great economy with housing crashes, corruptiom purges, predatory loans in africa, looming conflict with US on multiple geopolitical conflicts. Most of the west might end up sanctioning their currency in a major war like with Russia.

Big, scary and stable wins the game everytime for reserve currency.

kennend34• 4 years ago

The US military and the resulting stability if the US is keeping it up.

Do share with the larger audience how the US military is funded when you run a deficit year after year?

It is weird to conflate "military" with "currency strength".

Prior to the US being the reserve currency it was the British pound, how's that working out these days?

for some reason defaults on its debt obligations,

this tells me you are unaware of the topic you discuss. You can NEVER default on a debt issued in your own currency. You simply print more (The US calls it quantitative easing).

You only default on debt which is NOT in your own currency.

So Russia's default for example:

"On 4 April 2022, Russia technically defaulted on its foreign debt by failing to pay its obligations in US dollars (and after the grace period it actually defaulted because it did not pay 30 days grace period interest of around 1.9 million USD)."

Notice this was "obligations in US dollars"??

Argentina:

"The Argentine debt restructuring is a process of debt restructuring by Argentina that began on January 14, 2005, and allowed it to resume payment on 76% of the US$82 billion in sovereign bonds that defaulted in 2001 '"

"Sovereign bonds" - Again, notice this is US dollar debt?

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

Worth noting, the national debt rising to new milestones isn't that noteworthy. The rate of the debt rising (budget deficit) is currently lower than it was in 2019, which is pretty remarkable imo.

snarf21• 4 years ago

Agreed and this is what is so dumb about the whole fake "debt ceiling". Laws were signed that require the spending of $XX and then the ceiling says the government can't spend more than $YY, which is a lower number. So the government is required to spend money it isn't allowed to spend. It is all nonsense and political theater.

It isn't like any President can just go spend $4T on some random thing or that the FBI or FDA can do the same. Usually you only see them misappropriating funds from a different mandated budget area and spent on something else.

leeroyjenkins11• 4 years ago

Is that calculated in a way that takes into account that we blew out the spending in 2020 and 2021 to an insane level, and therefore the rate is lower than 2019 because 2020 and 2021 was so huge?

That's like saying look at the small rate my debt is increasing because I went from adding 1000 a month to spending 100,000 a 3 months ago and I'm only adding 99,000 this month.

spywaregorilla8• 4 years ago

No, it's in marginal dollars. It's the budget deficit.

Biden's claims of enormous budget deficit reductions are relative to the 2020/2021 highs and are thus mostly irrelevant. But it's still genuinely lower than 2019 by a bit.

One could have imagined a world where the spending didn't fall back to normal yet. ymmv

hnarn• 4 years ago

National debt in total numbers (dollars) is not only “not interesting”, it’s useless. In the same way that the debt of an individual is only interesting in relation to their capacity to pay it back, so is national debt only interesting in relation to that country’s GDP.

Many facts can be true at once. Here’s a fact: the US national debt to GDP ratio is higher than any other point in 70 years, probably more.

Here’s another: the debt to GDP ratio of the US is still lower than Singapore, Italy, Portugal, and less than half of Japan.

This headline strikes me as dishonest and political to the extreme. It insinuates quite simply that the US is in trouble, which the facts do not support.

National debt is not a bad thing by definition. The US GDP is incomprehensibly large at somewhere around $23T for 2021.

bryanlarsen• 4 years ago

The most important number is 0%. That is the fraction of the US debt that is not in US dollars.

akvadrako• 4 years ago

The debt to GDP ratio is also not that interesting. What matters most is the market value of the debt, which includes risk and interest rate. This is why countries are (very slowly) moving to IPSAS, a newer accounting standard.

This is because you can sell 10T of "good" debt for 5T of "bad" debt on the open market - the percent of GDP alone means little.

See for example about Greece: https://www.ft.com/content/71e828b3-4da1-3b3d-a7ca-073337fa6...

yucky3• 4 years ago

This headline strikes me as dishonest and political to the extreme.

The headline is quite literally without bias. It is 100% unbiased and completely factual.

The article may try to make (or not make) a big deal of what means but by definition you couldn't write a less biased headline.

soupfordummies2• 4 years ago

Sure, the sentence itself, "National debt surpasses $31T" is totally factual and without value.

The act of it being a headline at ALL is where I think the OP is saying that it's dishonest/political.

Choosing WHAT to report/highlight/headline can be just as much of a statement than the actual story itself.

I've noticed this is especially pronounced with Fox News compared to the other 10 or so news sites I look at near-daily.

An example of the point I'm trying to articulate is if I said to a friend "Hey, I lost my job today" they'd probably feel bad and buy me a beer but what if the real story was "I won the lottery and then I quit my job today"

My first statement was factually correct but it wasn't the full story and it would connotate a much different meaning to the full scope of the day's events.

soupfordummies2• 4 years ago

>This headline strikes me as dishonest and political to the extreme.

It's Fox News, they become more and more sensationalist and political-tabloid by the day

throwoutway2• 4 years ago

GDP is not how debt is paid back. that number has some meaning in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the rates & Treasury and TAXES that are more meaningful.

Eventually the US will need to stop growing by debt, or it will grow its debt to the point that it can only pay the interest not the principal

ThePowerOfFuet• 4 years ago

www.foxnews.com

No thanks.

National debt surpasses $31T

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