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But the debt grows even more, hence the ratio of debt to GDP is increasing. And the tiny bit that was inflated away after COVID part was also not so free, the bondholders are no longer willing to give their money for peanuts and the interest rates are much higher than a few years ago.
The problem with debt is that it can be meaningless for a long time and then it can matter a lot. Like the famous Lenin quote "There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen".
This can be true , but when people make this prediction every year and nothing happens, it comes off as crying wolf. This is much more applicable for smaller economies which do not have reserve currency status, which cannot inflate their debt as the US can.
If there's a clear indicator that's getting worse all the time but disaster hasn't struck yet, it's hard to see this as the same as crying wolf. You'll recall that in the fable it was, in fact, not clear that there was even was a wolf. We can all agree that debt to GDP is increasing.
Is it crying wolf to be concerned about a small moon on course to collide with the earth? It gets closer every day but nothing has happened yet!
If you are making a prediction about a small moon on course to collide with the Earth, hopefully your predictions are going to be "the moon will collide on so-and-so day". If you predict that the moon will collide next week, and it doesn't, and you predict that it will collide the week after that, and it still doesn't, and you keep that up, people will be justified in ignoring you.
Orbital mechanics permit a degree of certainty that's rare in most other human affairs.
We can pick another metaphor. If you keep OD'ing on fent on Market Street and people keep narcaning you from the brink of oblivion and telling you that you're gonna die if you do this again, but you haven't died yet and you've done this tons of times should you ignore them?
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The laws of physics are much more reliable than economic forecasts or the relation between debt vs. sustainability. Since 2008 there has been no shortage of smart-sounding people who make this type of prediction invoking charts and other data. It sounds persuasive, but it's of no actionable value. Sitting out of the market in the expectation of a crisis means loss of real wealth as inflation keeps growing at 2-5%/ year, and homes become more unaffordable. Ask people who waited to buy a home in 2010 fearing things would get worse or in 2020 during Covid.
Agreed.
I am long the market, so yes, agreed. But presumably there are ways that the national debt can become a problem without the S&P500 crashing.
Nevertheless, looking at the countries that had a higher debt to GDP ratio than the US right now, it's not a great collection - Japan, post-WWII UK, Sudan, Lebanon, Greece. Maybe it's not the debt that made these places suck, but it seems reasonable to be concerned about where this road leads.
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Indeed, the debt/GDP ratio reaching problematic levels is a very recent development (post-covid, getting much worse in Trump 2).
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