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!"
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.
end is probably ww btw. so are you all ready? last time it did work and lost of war debt was paid
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.
I think that's a pretty solid (pun intended) metaphor.
Past performance is not a predictor of future returns.