Joe,
It's true that the national debt is unpayable, as you replied in the letter, "Smart foxes have grabbed all the rabbits".
Plug $9 trillion at 5% interest over 30 years into your favorite amortization program and be prepared for a huge shock. Unpayable. And this doesn't take into account the increasing yearly balance of trade deficit. However, dollars or euros or rubles or ameros are just pieces of paper or ones and zeroes on a computer disk somewhere, backed by the full faith and credit of whatever country issues the currencies, or actually borrows the currencies from whatever central bank conjuring money out of thin air. Real wealth exists in the form of hard commodities like gold, silver, food, bridges, highways, power plants, machinery, bricks, mortar and any other hard assets you might think of.
For a long time I wondered what the hell the government thought it was doing by borrowing, borrowing and borrowing more for questionable reasons like war and "creative destruction". It dawned on me a few days back that there are only two ways to settle the national debt. Default, which may lead to war and would certainly lead to runaway inflation. Or, deed over national infrastructure to the creditors. It is already happening with the sale and lease of certain toll roads and ports.
OK China, OK Japan, OK Saudi Arabia, there is no way we can repay your loans. Here, you guys take Interstate 80, you other guys can have Interstate 40, and then the other guys, you can have the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. Oh, yes, and you can have the coal and whatever remaining oil we may have. (And let's keep on burning hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, the winters are still too cold and I have ocean front property Indiana.)
Anyway, this is what I see coming. No matter how it all settles out, when the hologram finally fizzles and reality becomes apparent it ain't a gonna be purty.
Doug
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Doug,
I am told that in one form or another, almost 70% of America's material assets are foreign owned in the form of "investment." I think Americans would be shocked if they knew how many Chinese companies, working in conjunction with American financial institutions, are buying up declining or at risk commercial properties such as shopping centers. I guess that's how the Chinese plan to get back that two billion a day they ere lending us to pay interest on our debt. The trick in hiding it is their American partnerships.
In art and labor,
Joe
