And who's going to hold the US responsible for repayment? Way I see it, US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying, whether through structuring it as some economic package or just straight up saying go suck it. The former's been done before (1933); maybe eventually we'll see the latter, if a nation has the balls to ask. And talking about it is pretty pointless, like talking about how wet you'll get swimming in a pool.

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14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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nradov 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, some sort of technical default is likely in a few decades. I expect that when debt payments become unsustainable the government will force bondholders to exchange their holdings with new bonds that have the same nominal face value but longer maturity and artificially low interest rates. The next step will be legislation that forces all retirement accounts such as 401(k) to purchase Treasury bonds for "safety".

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verzali 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So what happens when people stop lending money? No more military spending? No more social security? Massive tax rises? Hyper-inflation?

	▲	skeledrew 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They will be told "lend us money, or else" and that loan will get processed because the alternative is worse.

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tpm 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying

Sure, and what happens then? Nobody buys new gov bonds; non-gov debt rating stops making sense. For the financial system it's a shock so huge it's better to only do this if no other solution is possible, at which point the gov is bankrupt anyway.

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skeledrew 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Nobody buys new gov bonds; non-gov debt rating stops making sense.

Sanctions, black-listing and potentially more for anyone trying to play cute and do anything that "disadvantages the US". The rest of the world is forced to comply in enforcing it all, because nobody has backing power to stand against the US in any way.

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ydat 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Sanctions, black-listing and potentially more for anyone trying to play cute and do anything that "disadvantages the US". The rest of the world is forced to comply in enforcing it all, because nobody has backing power to stand against the US in any way.

You mean like the compliance of weak, sanctioned state of Iran with US demands?

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Gud 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps true 20 years ago, today I'm not so sure.

From across the pond, the USA looks like a has been who relies a lot on old merits. The world got bombed to pieces 80 years ago, but has step by step rebuilt itself.

The advantage the US had has been squandered by ineffective leadership.

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skeledrew 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They still hold the advantage no matter what. If diplomacy doesn't work, they can sanction or tariff or impose export controls. Or they can invade.

	▲	myvoiceismypass an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Invasion seems untenable given the leadership and strategy we are seeing in this giant Iran defeat.

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tpm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's not how any of this works.

And anyway, most US bonds are held by US domestic entities.

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skeledrew 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Doesn't really matter whether domestic or international, company or country. Anthropic got black-listed for not giving unrestricted access to their AI tech. India was slapped with an extra 25% tariff just for trading with Russia. Venezuela was invaded and its president snatched for not playing nice for US interests for too long. The list goes on and on throughout history. What the US wants, the US gets.

	▲	tpm 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, see also Vietnam, Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, where they didn't get what they wanted.

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malshe 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying

To think about it, we have the perfect president who has been telling creditors to go pound sand for decades: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...

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DANmode 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> talking about it is pretty pointless, like talking about how wet you'll get swimming in a pool.

Until the pool runs out of funding to do to replace the evaporated water.

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skeledrew 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It'll never run since they have the power to demand that it be kept sufficiently full.

	▲	Tadpole9181 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are we living in the same reality? The US can't even keep a single strait safe right now against a fairly "weak" state. We don't have the political willpower for American servicemen to die in defensive wars like Ukraine or to hold back ISIS in Afghanistan. How, exactly, are we going to demand sovereignties like China or the EU give us trillions of dollars?