If anything, today's environment negates the reality of "crowding out."
That said, the debt will be at an "unsustainable level" when people stop buying it.
And that won't happen until the rest of the world gets their house in order.
Treasury auctions can’t fail. I don’t mean failure is highly unlikely. I mean as the system is structured it’s operationally impossible for them to fail. There is no case where the primary dealers in aggregate can ever lack the reserves to make a market.
Of course, nothing lasts forever. The US government’s currency issuance (a much clearer way to think of it than “debt”) depends on demand for that currency. Sure, oil is a part of it, but a much larger part is tax burden. It’s not an accident that the USA claims and has the authority to tax its citizens worldwide. That and there is a large highly diversified economy that does business in dollars, so you can get pretty much anything from computer chips to F-35s with USD so they’re generally useful to have.
In fact, it would be operationally impossible for any other fiat currency to effectively replace the USD unless its issuer were willing to run sufficient deficits (“print money”/“issue debt”) in amounts sufficient to meet global demand for both payment clearing and holding financial reserves.
That's not even wrong.
I don't know where to start without coming off as aggressive, lecturing, talking down, or putting words in your mouth. Tough place to be in.
Instead, I'll volunteer a general pattern that helps avoid this intellectual trap.
I'm old enough now to have seen it wax and wane and take different forms, from Ron Paul to BRICS, and there might be one key fallacy uniting all those.
It's not dissimilar to what I've seen from independent large, unorganized, groups discovering Tether every 18 months.
It's that _you and the people you are learning new info from are not uniquely blessed, and not everyone is on your timeline_. It's likely there's a sizable # of people have had the idea before.
If the US was so heavily indebted it was in a worse place financially than other "IMF country", Argentina, Egypt, Ecuador, Tunisia...we'd see at least some of the same problems. There isn't a mass delusion, psychosis, or enough dumb people in the world to have the US in that category of country but still treated the way it actually is.
To some extent, I wonder if this short-sightedness is due to polarization. We spend 4 years being told everything is falling part and fundamental values are broken whenever the other party holds the presidency. In reality, US was _by far_ the most economically successful country during COVID, the last decade. It's earned it place and will continue to for a very long time. I highly, highly suggest reading information from a foreign perspective, Economist is great, if anything, they have a slight antipathy toward the US. And they don't swing for home runs via takes, ever.
The U.S. is in the IMF and has used it to borrow.
I would gladly pay more taxes for better schools, parks, cities, humane crime reduction, etc.
It's a novel set of parliamentary procedure shenanigans, starting about a decade ago, that it's up for debate.
That's why people talk about stuff like the platinum coin.