The US Treasury Department is now accepting Venmo and PayPal payments from those who want to donate money to reduce the nation’s ballooning $36.7 trillion debt.
yea my point was that the amount of sovereign debt to GDP doesn’t really matter. In the 1990s during the time when Clinton was destroying welfare and trying a budget surplus, the amount of sov debt to GDP was much lower than it is currently, yet they did austerity anyways, it was more ideology than any arbitrary ratio. And even if the Government ran so much surpluses (say, due to external surplus which will not happen with the U.S.), the capitalists will still demand their risk free assets, since 2008 that has been interest on reserves, but reserves and treasuries are equally risk free (longer term ones have interest rate risk but if you hold till maturity you will get paid).
what i’m saying applies to all countries with their own currencies, not just the U.S. U.S however has a special privilege of the rest of the world ‘wanting’ to accumulate Dollars. However, most first world currencies are extremely privileged w.r.t. rest of the world wanting to accumulate them, i.e. high on the ‘currency hierarchy’. this isn’t just about the exchange rate movements but the structural power that comes from geopolitical situation. Among third world countries, larger ones have more privilege e.g Indian Rupee, Indonesian Rupiah, Brazilian Real etc while say, Mozambican metical would be much lower in the hierarchy.
Of course it’s all a choice. The whole economic system is a choice. I’m just pointing out what ends up happening in practical terms.
yea my point was that the amount of sovereign debt to GDP doesn’t really matter. In the 1990s during the time when Clinton was destroying welfare and trying a budget surplus, the amount of sov debt to GDP was much lower than it is currently, yet they did austerity anyways, it was more ideology than any arbitrary ratio. And even if the Government ran so much surpluses (say, due to external surplus which will not happen with the U.S.), the capitalists will still demand their risk free assets, since 2008 that has been interest on reserves, but reserves and treasuries are equally risk free (longer term ones have interest rate risk but if you hold till maturity you will get paid).
what i’m saying applies to all countries with their own currencies, not just the U.S. U.S however has a special privilege of the rest of the world ‘wanting’ to accumulate Dollars. However, most first world currencies are extremely privileged w.r.t. rest of the world wanting to accumulate them, i.e. high on the ‘currency hierarchy’. this isn’t just about the exchange rate movements but the structural power that comes from geopolitical situation. Among third world countries, larger ones have more privilege e.g Indian Rupee, Indonesian Rupiah, Brazilian Real etc while say, Mozambican metical would be much lower in the hierarchy.
oh yeah very much agree with all that