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Taikonerdtoday at 3:55 PM4 repliesview on HN

It always gives me an ominous feeling to see these headlines. It's like we're walking out further and further on a frozen lake. "Hey, it's OK, the ice hasn't cracked yet! Let's keep going!"


Replies

danesparzatoday at 4:01 PM

I think that's a pretty solid (pun intended) metaphor.

Past performance is not a predictor of future returns.

petcattoday at 4:09 PM

I've always heard people say that the US debt doesn't matter when the debt itself is denominated in USD.

It's the old saying, if you owe the bank $1,000 then you have a problem. But if you owe the bank a trillion dollars then the bank has a problem.

Especially when that trillion dollars was spent on an insane fleet of aircraft carriers.

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kingleopoldtoday at 4:03 PM

end is probably ww btw. so are you all ready? last time it did work and lost of war debt was paid

pydrytoday at 4:08 PM

Total debt / GDP is the wrong metric for that. There's no limit to the serviceability of debt in a currency you print.

It makes more sense to conceptualise it as the total size of a giant savings account run by the government.

We are walking further out on the ice but that is measured more in other ways - with harder metrics like inflation, access to cheap energy, resources, industrial density and capabilities and access to technology - not this headline number.

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