
Total US Debt Is over $75T; Debt-to-GDP Lower Than in 2008 - Four_Star
https://thesoundingline.com/total-us-debt-is-over-75-trillion-debt-to-gdp-lower-than-in-2008/
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LUmBULtERA
That is an amazing amount of public and private debt. It's an interesting
thought that I have had $0 of private debt for at least 10 years, which means
someone else is picking up a lot of slack for me. Reminds me of an old Square
One TV episode that talked about the average number of donuts eaten by
Americans -- and I concluded that someone (or multiple someones) must have
seriously been picking up my slack there as well :p.

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charlesdm
There is good and bad debt, though. If you can borrow $1m to buy an asset that
generates you $250k a year.. then debt is great.

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mlevental
lol where does there exist such an asset

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Mikeb85
Profitable restaurants generate more than that.

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tuesdayrain
Why is the headline saying the debt-to-GDP ratio is low like it's a bad thing?
I'd expect it to be fine if the debt is high, as long as GDP is significantly
higher.

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IXxXI
Fun game: try to find a number for how many trillion euros the EU is in debt
and be amazed at how much censorship was involved in hiding the statistic.

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commandlinefan
It seems pretty clear that this debt will never be repaid, and will just keep
growing - how big can it grow before it just doesn't get to grow any more?

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Armisael16
First: that debt will be repaid. The people who own those T-bonds will redeem
them and get their money. This is an important distinction; you buy T-bonds
_because_ you know they’ll be paid back.

The total value of the debt is an almost meaningless number. As long as people
keep buying US debt, we’ll have the money to pay the debt off. (Strictly the
US could just print the money it needs to pay the debt right now - the
question is whether the resulting inflation would be worth it).

The rest cost of the debt is interest payments. As long as those stay at a
manageable fraction of GDP the US is just fine. If GDP increase 10% but debt
servicing only increases 5% then the servicing payments are effectively 4.5%
smaller.

In the next decade our problem is less likely to be total quantity of debt
than increasing interest rates (which are very low right now).

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NTDF9
Let's just say something breaks and we're in a recession (declining GDP,
declining immigrants, declining production, declining population).

What happens then?

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tonyedgecombe
Turn on the printing press. As long as the debt is in your own currency it
isn’t a problem.

If you don’t control your currency (think of Greece in the Euro) then it’s
another matter. The same if you borrow in a foreign currency.

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cimmanom
But higher than in 2007? Seems like a cherry-picked comparison.

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Four_Star
The peak was in 2008, as was the start of the Global Financial Crisis

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cimmanom
Right, that’s my point.

