this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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[–] mirshafie@europe.pub 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

You're right to highlight the decline of tangible assets like skilled labor, value chains and natural resources, but I think you're conflating the circular borrowing (and spending) between tech companies with the US Government's ability to pay back their debts. The tech companies are using circular relationships to inflate their nominal revenue, but the US government actually owes money in a linear fashion. (And as you pointed out, the government has destroyed much of its domestic production capacity for the long term, with energy perhaps being the most worrying resource to have been squandered).

The biggest problem is that the interest on the public debt adds about $1T per year, which means that 19% of all federal revenue (or 39% of individual income taxes) is needed just to pay off the interest.

It is true that the Government could just essentially print money to wipe out their debts to domestic lenders, and that's roughly 3/4 of the money that the government owes. But that would lead to massive inflation, and it leaves approximately $10T in foreign-held debt. Historically, the USA has been able to use the position of the USD as the global reserve currency to offload its inflation on the rest of the world (see how Europe stagnated after the 2008 subprime mortgage crash in the USA, or for that matter look at Japan).

But the USD is now losing its position as the reserve currency. Foreign governments are selling off US treasuries. Foreign pension funds are selling off US stocks. The US is becoming increasingly isolated even to former close allies, and it is no longer seen as a safe place to park money. So if the government tries Quantitative Easing or any similar measure that has worked in the past, that inflation won't be readily absorbed by the US's allies, and it's the US public that will have their investments and pensions wiped.