So what happens when the debt can't be paid off?

[Fester]

Each year millions and millions of dollars are simply "given" to foreign governments. For just once Congress shouldn't punishment Americans for their stuid choices. Perhaps one year, just one year, don't give a nickle to any forign countries. They will suck it up and they will survive.

 

[mike8170]

Each year millions and millions of dollars are simply "given" to foreign governments. For just once Congress shouldn't punishment Americans for their stuid choices. Perhaps one year, just one year, don't give a nickle to any forign countries. They will suck it up and they will survive.

Like I said, Washington is full of dumba**es, and a bunch of dumba**es keep putting them in there. BTW, "millions and millions" aren't given away, but billions and billions.

 

[NYFelon]

Pretty soon Canada will be making jokes about OUR currency exchange rate. I just don't know how I'm going to handle that.

Syrup suckers.

As of right now, they are roughly par. $1CAD = $.98USD

 

[LEaSH]

We used to live like 19 year old little kings back in the day.

Windsor Ontario is the least glamorous of Canadian cities, but we had fun when a US dollar was worth about 1.5 CAN in the early 90's.

I'm sure it was exchanged closer to 1USD / 1.3 CAN but cash businesses really gave great values to american cash spenders. Things were just different.

 

[NYFelon]

[Apologies for thread Jack]

I've been keeping track of it because my wife has to be in Montreal for an Art exhibit of her work. I'm hoping that your prediction does not come to pass before then. It's bad enough we have to have roughly equal money. But an America's Hat dollar being worth more than an American dollar? Blasphemy.

 

[drop45]

The Fed (we the sheople) does own most of the debt, China won't be collecting anything but interest on their money lent to us as long as we keep filling our overpriced over stuffed houses with their JUNK. It's a "cozy" relationship. just my .02 worth. And by the way, Both political parties have screwed us.

 

[Cowboy71]

The far left truly believes that absolutely nothing will happen if we just keep adding and adding to the debt. That's one reason they continue to advocate more and more government spending (the main reason being to create a dependent class that has to vote for them to keep the goodies coming.)

But the most likely outcome is we end up like some failed South American or African country from the 70's and 80's that tried to solve financial woes by printing more and more money until it becomes worthless. Inflation skyrockets and you have craziness like a million dollars for a gallon of milk. When things deteriorate that far you basically have to reset your economic and political system to clean up the mess.

 

[djl02]

California is worth about 16 trillion....Hate to give up the Oil out there, but love to give up everything else about it.

Works for me,Dig a trench along the border. It'll fall into the ocean eventually anyway.
Seriously though,I've read ,China wants some of our natural resources as ,partial payment.
I read something about them devalueing their currency to,to offset our devalue of our currency.
What do we owe China? 1 to 2 Trillion?

 

[NYFelon]

China has the value of the yuan pegged at roughly 7:1 USD. So they simply match our printing with more printing of their own.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

There's still sources of wealth to exhaust before they declare bankruptcy:

Articles: The Feds Want Your Retirement Accounts

 

[AtTheMurph]

Easy way out is to print money.

Easy way out? No, that is the cowards and politicians way out. It seems to be easy but it is the worst and most destructive path to take.

When money dies society collapses, morality disappears and death and destruction appear. It's HELL.

Austerity, belt tightening is the easy way out but it requires action and pain today. That is why no politician will ever stand for it. They are the enemy because they are politicians.

Their goals and ours are now diametrically opposed. They seek to retain power by limiting the present pain but their actions guarantee a collapse and more pain and destruction in the future.

It's like your doctor telling you not to have that cancerous limb removed because it's really going to hurt and it's going to take you 5 years to recover and learn how to operate with out it. The flip side is that you will die a horrible, painful death as the cancer metastasizes and gets into your bones and organs and kills you in a slow, ugly fashion.

 

[rooster]

One needs only look at the collapse of the Russia when their currency became worthless.

 

[gunman41mag]

You need to buy a rosetta stone to learn to speak in Chinese

 

[Hohn]

Default is far more likely than unlimited printing of money.

The US is not Argentina. The dollar is so integrated into global finance that the Fed cannot inflate our debt away. It can reduce it, but it cannot pull an Argentina or Wiemar Republic or a Zimbabwe.

I'll see if I can find the WSJ article from a few years back about this..

 

[No2rdame]

We default and our economy crashes, along with those around the world. It'll be ugly, to say the least. Desperate countries during an economic collapse will bolster themselves by going to war.

It happened in the 1930s-1940s with Germany and we see how that turned out. Only, this time things will get a little bit uglier.

 

[thatgtrguy]

I think when we get to the point of not being able to pay our debt; we simply go to a country like china and say:

"You will forgive a portion of our debt or there will be far more products in wal mart that say made in Vietnam (or pick another country) instead of made in china."

Or go to the saudis and say "You can forgive our debt or you'll find every patent for electric vehicle technology to go public domain tomorrow."

Things like that will happen more and more. Because even in our economically weak state; the civilized world still looks to the US for leadership and cosumerism even if they don't admit it.

 

[88GT]

printing money would do nothing but make prices for EVERYTHING go up.
as if they haven't already been on the rise...

It makes it a helluva lot easier to pay down debt. Inflation is great for people with debt.

Default is far more likely than unlimited printing of money.

The US is not Argentina. The dollar is so integrated into global finance that the Fed cannot inflate our debt away. It can reduce it, but it cannot pull an Argentina or Wiemar Republic or a Zimbabwe.

I'll see if I can find the WSJ article from a few years back about this..

While you're at it, look for the articles where the rest of the world is considering moving away from the USD as the "global currency." To some extent, I'm sure that's a large portion of posturing in an attempt to influence U.S. monetary policy in their favor (whatever that might be). But we'd be fooling ourselves if continued to hold the belief that the USD will remain the currency du jour indefinitely.

And none of the "the world is intimately tied to the dollar" stuff is gonna stop someone who wants to do it bad enough. Kirchner doesn't seem to be getting the memo that it doesn't work.

 

[TTravis]

Obama will save us. He has hope and change for everyone.

 

[No2rdame]

Obama will save us. He has hope and change for everyone.

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more change than I did before he was elected. It's in the form of my take-home pay. What used to be dollars are now in pennies.

 

[spencer rifle]

That ship has sailed. We already can't pay. There is just the time lag now between the government cranking out fancy toilet paper and the rest of the world realizing it's just fancy toilet paper. Use the time well.