Yeah, apparently he's talked about "negotiating down the national debt"? [1]
How the fuck would that even work? Would he just tell all the Americans holding treasury bills that they're only going to get half of their money back? I think that would completely erode any confidence in the US economy, both domestically and internationally.
Well one of the reasons we can be so spendthrift in this country is our financing rates staying so low despite massive amounts of debt. This is due to confidence by global investors and asset managers in the US's economy and ability to pay back its debts.
The US can try to renegotiate or not pay, but that's an overt signal to investors that the US is not reliable and will result in the 10-year Treasury bond rate soaring, probably permanently, which will decimate our country's credit and is an own goal that we probably wouldn't be able to come back from economically.
> The US can try to renegotiate or not pay, but that's an overt signal to investors that the US is not reliable and will result in the 10-year Treasury bond rate soaring
The 10 year rate is not a force of nature. It is set at auction by investors who believe US t-bonds are a safer resting place than those of the economies that were destroyed by the nukes.
No, it’s like 1/3 foreign, 1/3 domestic, 1/3 the Fed and other money moving between federal agencies.
Presumably the latter would be a wash. Then of the domestic holdings, a big chunk is state and city holdings. Institutional
investors would be mad. Citizens with saving bonds and/or money tied up in t-bills thanks to reddit are a tiny fraction.
Even still, if we assume that the fed is a wash, that suggests that half of the remainder is domestic. I don't think that the orange idiot would start nuking the US. Oh god, I really hope that he's not quite that stupid.
