Actually bill clinton paid some of it back (and created 22 million new jobs and an internship).
also the us debt is 38 trillion
also the us debt is 38 trillion
The budget was balanced and/or a surplus for the years from 1997-2001, which meant a lot less money was borrowed (or fewer bonds were sold, depending on how you want to look at it.)
The percentage of public debt to GDP also fell substantially from 1993-2000, which is a better metric than gross debt levels anyways. Here’s a chart of that from FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
> also the us debt is 38 trillion
You may as well keep increasing the number of second fine, because in no earthly circumstance will I ever be able to pay it back.
When that's the case, you'd be surprised what happens when the breaking point comes.
Or do you think countries haven't gone bankrupt before?
A better analogy would be this:
You have $100k income, and $800k debt, on which you have to pay ~$40,000 interest every year. That takes up a good chunk of your income. But if the debt doubled, at the same interest rate, you could really be in trouble.
Well at that point, all hell breaks loose - that's the Weimar story all over again.
The minute the US isn't able to project power globally, and the minute the Gulf states shift even a single transaction away from the petrodollar, the USD is finished. At that point, it might not make sense for them to accept the USD or dollar-denominated debt, either because of constant devaluation or the pointlessness of holding onto US Treasuries (because the US won't pay its debt). No one would buy US debt as a safe haven any more, which means the US won't be able to fund its budget.
Dollar hegemony isn’t because of the petrodollar. It’s the other way around. The oil states throw off huge amounts of profit and oil is such a big market you need the dollars reach to service it.
The spot market is different but that's not where most of the world's oil is sold.
> The oil states throw off huge amounts of profit and oil is such a big market you need the dollars reach to service it.
The oil states prefer dollars (and have pegged their currency to the dollar) solely because of a number of historical decisions that enabled dollar hegemony, which made the oil states peg their currency to the dollar and prefer the USD. That's changing now, but only very recently and at a snail's pace.
But I’ve personally traded oil in euros and know people that trade it in pounds daily. The yuan negotiations were complex because China wanted to get the currency controls set right so that it didn’t destabilize their peg while the saudis didn’t want get stuck with the worlds most illiberal currency.
This week India went back to trading for oil in rupees with an American global adversary at the behest of the US president.
The gulf states bargain on security was a boon for them and the states, but again the correlation was reversed. The Americans provided security, a willing and ravenous market for the goods and a stable liberal currency when few others could.
Don't equate spot market buying with what countries do for national supply. When countries buys from Petro states, they're not buying on the spot market.
You cannot buy oil from Saudi Aramco in pounds or euros because why not. They will simply laugh you out of the office and tell you to deal with an oil trader (the actual people you're dealing with, on the spot market). But you can actually buy from them directly in USD (which a lot of the aforementioned trading firms like Glencore, Trafigura and even Jane Street actually do).
Even though the largest oil producer in the world will continue to price in dollars no matter what. The third largest oil producer was forcibly dedollarized already and the gulf state national producers already sell oil into the spot market outside of dollars today?
I appreciate the humor you hid in this aside.
* That was the number that I first heard, but a quick search shows it's estimated anywhere from 80 trillion to 210 trillion dollars.