Incorrect headlines say this is the first time since WWII. Not quite, counting Covid.
US Federal Debt Current Details
- Total: 39,065 trillion
- Debt Held by the Public: 34.431 trillion
- Debt Held by Foreign and International Investors: 9.248 trillion (2025 Q3)
- Inter-Agency Debt: 7.634 trillion
Numbers are quarterly from the St. Louis Fed except for the current quarter which is from Debt-to-the-Penny from the US Treasury as of March 31, 2026.
Intergovernmental Debt
Intergovernmental debt represents money the federal government owes to its own agencies, trust funds, and programs rather than to outside investors, banks, or foreign nations. As of 2025–2026, this debt totals over $7 trillion, primarily held by the Social Security Administration, federal employee retirement funds, and Medicare trust funds.
Economists ignore intergovernmental debt owed to itself. For the purpose of calculating debt-to-GDP, we use Debt Held by the Public.
The Rise of Debt Held by the Public
- Increase from 1970 to 1990: 2.157 trillion (20 years)
- Increase from 1990 to 2001: 0.901 trillion (11 years)
- Increase from 2001 to 2008: 1.995 trillion (7 years)
- Increase from 2008 to 2020: 11.890 trillion (12 years)
- Increase from 2020 to 2026: 14.207 trillion (6 years)
The above timeline roughly marks the start of recessions.
I believe you can spot a trajectory, time, and magnitude set of problems here.
US Federal Debt Percent of Nominal GDP
By my calculation, debt-to-GDP topped the 100 percent mark in the fourth quarter of 2025.
I see a lot of posts stating this is the first time since WWII. I have it as the third time since WWII.
For my calculation, I divided the latest quarterly debt numbers and divided by average of the latest 4 quarters of GDP.
US debt-to-GDP was 112.7 percent in WWII (106 percent for public debt). Total debt is now 125.15 percent of GDP.
Does anyone think we are going to have another baby boom to bail this out?
Let’s put everything together.
US Federal Public debt vs nominal GDP
Annual Interest Payments
Annual interest payments on U.S. public debt have officially surpassed $1 trillion, driven by rising interest rates and a debt exceeding $31 trillion, making it one of the fastest-growing federal budget components.
As of 2026, this cost exceeds annual defense spending and represents over 14% of government spending, a figure projected to grow to over $2 trillion by 2036.
Trump’s Promises
Recall that Trump promised to use tariff revenue to send $2,000 dividend checks, bail out farmers from the mess he made, and reduce national debt as well.
Trump keeps repeating his lies with no challenges from Republican Senators.
Occasionally Rand Paul will make a noise regarding levels of debt. But no one in either party is going to do a damn thing about any of this.
Republicans are only concerned about debt when Democrats are in control of the White House.
This will eventually blow up in a huge credit crisis, but no one can tell you when.
Meanwhile pressure on interest rates is up. This will increase the deficit and add to debt. And this is happening without even being in recession!
Related Posts
April 29, 2026: The Long Bond Yield Is Signaling a Huge Fear of Inflation
The 30-year long bond yield is just 17 BPs from a new 18-year high.
April 30, 2026: PCE Inflation Is Ripping Higher. Don’t Expect Fed Interest Rate Cuts
Year-over-year PCE inflation jumped to 3.5 percent. The Fed wants 2.0 percent.
April 30, 2026: Offshore US Dollars Surge Over the $14 Trillion Mark, Where’s De-Dollarization?
Is de-dollarization happening? If so, where and how?
Lets put everything togather…using facts not fanticy.
All you need to know can be found, 24, 7, 365, at:
U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time
Natl. Debt: $39.1 Trillion
Ratio of Debt to GDP: 132.16%
Annual Interest on the Debt: $1,023 Trillion
Plus much more important Information.
Wake up Mish!
Wake up to what? All empires die the same way. They go broke. They can’t afford their empires (military). 99 percent don’t get it until Stage Final, currency crisis.
Taco and his sheep are just getting started.
“ Meanwhile pressure on interest rates is up. This will increase the deficit and add to debt. And this is happening without even being in recession!”
We’re not “not in recession because things are strong.” We’re “not in recession because the Fed stepped in.”
We were sliding toward recession in 25Q4.
The only reason we are not in a recession right now is because the Fed injected liquidity to stabilize conditions.
So the current rate pressure and deficit expansion aren’t happening in a vacuum, they’re happening because policy makers stepped in to prevent a downturn.
That’s very different from saying the economy is naturally strong
A parabolic is as a parabolic does. Ray Dalio says we are in stage 5 of 6 of empires. Empires and parabolics follow a path. It’s human nature. It’s on auto-pilot.
We are in the Fourth Turning. There were Three Turnings before that. Then the previous Fourth Turning. What goes around in a cycle, comes back around.
It does look like there are some Republicans objecting to this massive debt
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5860514-chip-roy-national-debt-gdp-criticism/
It was good that Chip Roy voted NAY for the CARES Act but he voted YEA for the OBBBA which added 2.8 trillion to the debt, so that was not good. You have to vote against it every time. The only Republicans that have consistently faithfully opposed more of this disastrous debt that has caused this mess in our country are Paul and Massie, which proves that the Republicans are virtually no different from the Democrats where it really matters, hence the term Uniparty.
A 6% income tax across the board without any deductions for any reason will eliminate the budget deficit.
6% for Federal? States, counties and cities will follow with their tax increases, since that 6% will come out of somewhere. And you’d have to say where it does come out of. Housing? Auto expenses? Health care? You think people actually SAVE 6% so they can lose it for some politicians fever dream?
I’d gladly pay that as opposed to what I pay now!
GDP is south of $30 trillion: 6% of that is $1,6 trillion. US annual spending about $7 trillion, 6% is way short. to get to balance, a rate north of 23% would be necessary. Considering the current tax receipts are running near 17%, however congress would legislate to get to balance would take an increase more than 6% of GDP. The disruption to the economy would require the increase to be much more.
6% of that is $1,6 trillion should be $1.8 trillion
I didn’t say it would pay the entire federal budget. Just the deficit, so the national debt will stop growing. Once in place, I would like to see the House and Senate agree to a law that says taxes can only be cut as spending is cut.
I did not understand you meant an incremental increase with your 6% flat tax which is basically proposing we tax our way to financial sanity and prosperity. That is still short of the current and projected north of $2 trillion deficit and transferring a couple trillion dollars from the private sector that would invest some portion into wealth generating ventures to the government that would squander it would be a drag on the economy. Basically, the country as a whole is broke and the only way to fix that is cut spending.
Adding your flat tax proposal would raise federal receipts as a percentage of GDP to about 23%. The maximum since the federal reserve and income tax were initiated a century back has been 20% no matter the rate or scheme to siphon the money from the private sector. See the linked chart:
Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
Sorry link did not come through on original reply
Can we talk debt without mentioning the $1.5 trillion proposed for military spending next year?
$2.8 trillion spent by all countries, including the US, in 2025
So the US is going to spend more than the entire rest of the world ?
There’s a stupid madness in that, when we consider the poor outcomes of the wars we’ve fought
America is becoming a second tier country with a second tier military on the way to becoming a third tier country.
Just take a look at China’s large cities realize that except for capitalism that could have been us.
Seeing this Once is enough,
“Being a second mover has big advantages. The hybrid-electric Cavorite X7 was designed as an eVTOL 2.0 ready to fly farther and faster than all-electric aircraft.”
Spirit Airlines closed down last night – DJT’s Iran war chickens are finally coming home to roost. This is just the beginning.
My view is that party doesn’t matter, but, I will ALWAYS vote against incumbents (pretty easy to do here in Texas, as they are always Republican’s), as they (incumbents) are the ones who have chosen to never solve this crisis. No matter the party, the deficit and debt has just gone up. So, I will vote against those people who were there when that happened. Unfortunately, I continually lose here in Texas, but, you never know, maybe this is the year….
A wonderful idea, but the vast majority just vote for their party guy, to hell with the country.
I was just with some family and friends and, in that crowd, there were far right and far left characters. They all complained about the state of things, so, I gave them my suggestion. 1 or 2 at a time and in 100 years, I’ll probably have something going!
I’ve been voting Libertarian since ’88 and still regret my ’84 Reagan vote.
Yeah, while I agree with a lot of Libertarian views, I’ve always felt, when I did vote that way, that it was a waste. As they never do and never will, win. But, maybe if we start voting out some incumbents, over and over again, then, a libertarian will get their shot.
With the Electoral College system, if you live in states like California, Utah, Massachusetts, Alabama, Hawaii, or Florida, your vote for President is already meaningless. Unless the vote in your state is tied and your vote makes the difference, your vote was completely meaningless. So why wouldn’t you vote for someone you believe in, even (especially) if they represent a third party?
Not a waste as if more people voted for Libertarian and pushed their results up, the other politicians would notice and see that the people are serious and they would start getting their act together.
Looks like things really went south after the GFC.
They say that lenders are tightening their standards right now, because of the Iran war.
What I wish when people are talking about budget items, at least occasionally, is that they put it in terms of what Uncle Sam’s income is, not how much the budget is. To me those would be much more realistic and eye-opening numbers.
That would draw unwanted attention to tax cuts, and who is getting them.
“Occasionally Rand Paul will make a noise regarding levels of debt. But no one in either party is going to do a damn thing about any of this.”
Let’s change the above phrase slightly, but provocatively:
Occasionally SOMEONE will make SOME noise regarding levels of LIES in Government. But no one in either party is going to do a damn thing about any of this.
As I said above, we should keep voting them out, until they realize that this is what is important to us.
The problem is that it’s important to you, not to the general us.
Can you afford a $10,000 tax hike? With 170 million workers and a $1.7 trillion deficit that’s what it would take to close it.
or you could completely shutdown Medicare and Medicaid.
Either way you get instant depression plus extra rioting.
I realize that you are correct in this idea. It’s only me, and my vote, but, I do spread this word far and wide, and try to convince people of it’s validity. The hardest part, for most, is that they actually would have no problem not voting for their guy, they don’t really like him/her that much. They just, under no circumstances, will ever vote for the other “guy/gal” because they will never vote for the other party. And the primary system makes this even worse. The incumbent wins the primary 9 out of 10 times, and if he doesn’t, those in that party just vote for the new guy.
Strictly speaking, at least they got rid of the incumbent, but, more often than not, the new guy/gal is the exact same as the old guy/gal.
But, regarding your second point, my solution is to pass a law that says, to some effect, “going forward, we are going to raise taxes “x” percent (could be 0.5, 1, 2, whatever number is feasible) every year, and, AT THE SAME TIME, reduce spending by “x” percent, every year going forward until not only our budget is balanced, but, until our debt to gdp ratio is “x”.
Under such a system, both citizens and corporations (and the government for that matter) can plan. It won’t be a “jolt” to the system, and everyone will have “skin in the game”.
I know I live in Utopia, but, if you don’t throw out your ideas in the brainstorming stage, what good is it!
The one thing that I do know is that for the majority of my lifetime, I’ve been hearing that it we cut taxes on “the job creators” and corporations, the growth will fix everything. Yet the situation has got nothing but worse.
The depression is inevitable and the causes of it are having not cut spending and or raised taxes. Seems a lot of people wont take notice or understand something until it hits them personally. The US economy is like a person that has been living unhealthy for a long time and has a lot of relatively smaller warning ailments, but they just continue, because something really big hasnt hit yet, but of course it will eventually.
Everybody professes to be horrified by the nominal $1 trillion interest bill. Nobody seems to notice that in real terms the Federal government is being paid by bond holders for issuing more and more federal debt.
Intergovernmental debt should be included. It is basically money owed by government for various types of pensions which are in turn owed to individual people. In for profit organizations these monies must be held separately in order to protect workers should the company go bankrupt. The fact that the government has raided these funds and is now using them for its own operations is concerning. Generally accepted accounting principles view these amounts as debts. Ie. These workers will eventually retire and the amounts will need to be paid. In fact the obligation under Social Security is much larger than the government has the funds for. The government has taken funds from the workers in exchange for a promise to pay a certain amount in the future. By investing those funds in low return government TBills etc. instead of a balanced portfolio they have effectively mismanaged those funds and have caused this significant shortfall.
if you include inter governmental debt as debt, which you should, debt is over 120% of GDP.
Note also that this does not include state or municipal debt.
in absolute dollars the US is the most indebted nation in the world.
The combination of high debt and a congress that can’t agree on anything is probably the greatest threat to the US. Trump’s BBB and the war in Iran have made things so much worse.
The only choice the US has is to raise taxes. Which in the US is political suicide.
Don’t worry AI fixes everything
Approximately 30% to 50% of U.S. data centers planned for 2026—representing gigawatts of potential capacity—are facing delays or cancellations, driven by severe shortages of electrical equipment, strained power grids, and local community opposition. While tech giants have announced hundreds of billions in investment, only about 5 GW out of 12–16 GW of planned 2026 capacity is currently under active construction
There may be no actual profit on these data centers and AI will be a bust as far as ROI.
No wonder.
War time economy and debt can reach over 100%.
Forever war!
But I thought Heg, Seth and Trump paused the war.
WON the war!! At least seven times according to trump.
Debt… If you can print money, it’s just the problem of those who hold all those treasuries and such, right? If the dollar looses value, China and Japan just produced all those products for nothing, and the Gulf nations just gave their oil away for free, and those hoping for some social security pension… oh well why would the Epstein class care about them.
Social security will be gone in the next 10-20 years
Boomers will be given a choice:
Your choice Boomer
Boomers worried about 10 – 20 years from now?.What generation sang Don’t Fear The Reaper?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A1qM2F7Pk-o
They’re not the ones driving aimlessly by themselves in like-new $75,000 pickup trucks.
Baby boomers are typically defined as individuals born between 1946 and 1964, making them between 62 and 80 years old as of 2026.
For Boomers it’ll be more like (State Sponsored) needle and the spoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUs6UBm_AY
Boomers don’t seem to be able to accept the fact that they’ll all be dead by then.
Ridiculous statement. The USG can simply pay for the Social Security gap just like they pay for war.
The Fed Reserve said as much in sworn Congressional testimony.
Based on your economic illiteracy, looks like you found the right place
Why would they do that, when they could hand to some oligarch?
There are deserving pharmaceutical and military industrial companies who could really use the money too!
More debt to add on to the too much debt.
Yup just keep borrowing everything will be fine said congress.
….. and when the music stops the fighting begins.
“Social security will be gone in the next 10-20 years”
What?! Are you saying someone managed to hack into the lockbox?
Not exactly gone since Gen X and onward already took a 13% haircut. But soon, every SS recipient will take another 20% haircut.
Most boomers will be dead in 20 years having sucked out all social security money. People born in the late 60’s and onward are the ones left holding the debt bag. Thank god they will inherit from the boomers.
Joe are you describing YOUR future?
Until your kids can’t afford a house, because all that foreign money flooded back into our real estate.
But that’s a problem for later…
“Deficits don’t matter”*
Tricky Dick Cheney
*except when a Democrat is President
Sounds like we need more immigrants!
Open the doors again to those illiterate in their own language.
We don’t have to, the illiterates all live here already.
Whut’s illiberate mean? Talk right!
Economist Alfred E. Neuman had the final say on deficits: “What? Me worry?”
Name one thing which would be different if the debt were half of what it is. Increased spending fixing crappy infrastructure? Let’s not hallucinate. Any extra money would to into (mostly fake) military spending.
As long a broke fools like UAE lick America’s boots to get their hands on luscious real USD to swap for their Dirham (in Arabic means “camel dung”) and they need it so badly that Bessent can order them to quit OPEC, BRICS and possibly Islam, then it makes sense to change the motto on the dollar to “What? Me worry?”
We do need to de-dollarize the Almighty. To pretend the Devine has a love for unequal weights and measures is absurd. “In God We Trust” on our money has to go. To see Alfred on some denomination of Federal Reserve notes with the “What Me Worry” moniker would be totally appropriate.
We need some larger bills, $500 and $1000 would help us poor poker players who need to carry large amounts of cash.
On the other hand the WSOP (World Series of Poker) now requires that players download their app for registration and seat assignments, they also allow attachment of CC for entry fees. If the credit card companies allow this industry wide I see a very bad outcome with thousands or tens of thousands of bankruptcies.
“Debt held by the public” excludes a huge chunk of money owed by the Federal government. That this roughly $7 trillion is owed to the SS trust fund, the Federal Employees Retirement System, Medicare, et al. in no way lessens it being an obligation/burden to the taxpayer no different than that held by the public. Nor is it a trivial amount.
Mish you have previously belittled this. Could you explain why?
That debt is serviced in other ways. For example SS is paid for by payroll deductions and not tax receipts that go to interest payments.
It doesn’t meant it doesn’t matter because it does but that debt isn’t financed by borrowing / interest payments etc.
The Federal government definitely pays interest on its debt held in the SS trust fund.
Yes it does. But it doesn’t fund SS from general tax revenue which is how regular debt gets serviced. SS is funded from payroll tax so even if the US somehow defaulted on regular debt it would not affect SS.
The SS trust fund is excess funds collected from social security deductions from employees to fund future shortfalls. It is a pool of money which should be invested so that it can earn income and help pay additional future shortfalls. The government has tapped into these funds which are deducted from employees. Effectively the government has invested these funds in low interest government bonds and treasuries and used those funds to cover its deficits rather than investing them in a balanced portfolio which would have yielded far better returns. The status of SS fund according to most recent reports indicates that the social security trust fund will run out of money in 2033 or 2034. During this time the government will need to pay these funds out which means it will need to borrow funds from the public in order to do that. The same thing is happening with government employee pensions.
Each time the government pays off an IOU to the trust fund, it is paying principal and interest to the SS system. The trust fund is shrinking, so part of the IOU payments is going to pay the current obligations to current beneficiaries. The system was designed not long after Black Tuesday. They weren’t big fans of investing safety net funds in the stock market. The trust fund itself was a terrible idea. Each year congress and the President should have been forced to balance revenue and benefits in whatever manner they saw fit. The electorate would have been motivated to elect vastly better congressmen and Presidents than the misfits they started electing with Reagan. The fund allowed them to punt their responsibilities to around 8-10 years from now. We have no idea who will be in office 6-8 years from now, or what they will do, but with around 26% of all voters being elderly (a higher percentage if you start at 55), I doubt voters will vote to totally screw any surviving baby boomers.
Intergovernmental debt is really IOU’s that are backed by the government’s ability to tax, borrow or print money to purchase new debt. Basically, it is an accounting gimmick to eliminate the need to fund its obligations allowing social security taxes to be used for payments other than social security as an example. When the intergovernmental debt goes down, debt held by the public goes up by an equal amount and becomes subject to actual interest payments, one contribution to current rising interest payments,
Private and public debt has brought significant activity forward recently, but without continuously expanding debt that activity will not be sustained in the private sector but for government much will remain with inflation protection. Result is contracting private economy and its public sector funding when the public sector will need even more funding. This is a reason why we cannot inflate the debt problem away. Another is inflation is devaluing the dollar and with the dollar losing purchasing power, those lending to the government will demand higher interest rates to compensate, further increasing debt service. This is particularly bad when debt is held in short maturities, roughly requiring rolling over every three years or less and compounded by the expectation of rising interest rates applied to new debt.
I know it is not likely, but the only way out of our fiscal mess is to cut government spending below revenue or the debt continues to grow, and our mess gets worse, albeit possibly slower with gimmicks kicking the can down the road. Depending too much on increased taxes has the side effect of being a drag on the economy reducing revenue and adding to safety net expenditures. Further, since the fed was formed and income taxes initiated, federal revenues from taxation has never exceeded 20% of GDP per information from the federal reserve. Currently revenue is around 17%.
It is false that the only way out is to cut government spending.
GDP has evolved into a bullshit statistic. In the USA it’s mainly based on financial flimflam. The rest is “broken windows fallacy” with war being the height of economic destruction.
“Flattened country fallacy”
I can take any wino off the street and make that wino look like a financial wizard, as long as the aforesaid wino can borrow and refinance.
Yep, all was fine with NINJ loans until 2008.
US prosperity now faces extreme sensitivity to interest rates.
Wake me up when it hits a quadrillion.
That historical debt as %GDP chart really highlights how ruinous war is to a sound economy. Well, war and the creation of the fed.
Excellent post. 1-Star Mishelin (could have been 3 with a musical tribute and cartoon!).
The hard solution to this mess boils down to tax hikes or cuts in government spend or both. Where can cuts be made from a bloated budget? Military or Social programs (SS/Medicare).
Another gambit is to inflate it away. Whatever happens, fixed income people are the big losers along with anyone dependent on social programs or anyone not holding income producing assets that can raise prices with inflation.
And no, there won’t be a baby boom with median age of women in America pushing 40. Lol, it’s so bad the draft age was raised to 42 recently, that tells you everything you need to know about the demographic death spiral.
Of course, some people here welcome the collapse and want the US to turn into Detroit everywhere. Enjoy it, I guess.
And now you know why my mantra has been “Got exit strategy?” Each post basically writes the reasons for a good exit strategy.
And then there’s the other worry….
Do worry, Trump will find a way to make things even worse.™
We’re going to need another pandemic. A real one this time.
With clown Kennedy, you’ve got measles, candida auris, polio, hepatitis B, tuberculosis and a few others all on deck.
If you don’t know what’s happening with these, I suggest you google it and prepare for your safety and profits.
Vaccines cause autism. They also cause SIDS. Had measles as a kid. I am fine. The two girls in Texas, who died after contracting measles, died because of improper hospital treatment for pneumonia. Iotragenic deaths. A Gates promoted Polio shot, caused Polio in some children in India. There are a number of credentialed medical & scientific professionals who are critical of vaccines. Odd that the vaccine promoters are opposed to new scientific gold standard studies. What are they afraid of?
Propaganda idiocy.
We have an entire continent of young cheap labor begging to come here and work, and instead of capitalizing on it, we criminalize and deport. The stupidity is astounding. People forget who built America.
Nativism is a national suicide pact.
Yup, but there are nations around the world that are begging for talent to join them. I do wonder how much of this Middle East war was designed, in part, to get people to move out of Dubai and other growing tech centers there.
Turkey is the new Dubai now, let’s see what happens there. In Asia, Malaysia and Thailand are becoming tech hubs and Korea already has a booming economy due to memory demand for AI.
Bingo.
You have interesting insights here. I would worry about deficits that are greater than 3% because I think Monetarism – treating money simply as a quantity , abundant or scarce – that sets prices inevitably. I would also worry about Fed debt maturities getting so short term that rollovers get crazy and impractical
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/a-third-of-us-debt-matures-in-2026/
The reason why US politicians from left to right are sitting on their hands when it comes to the mounting debt problem is that the Federal government is effectively paying a real interest rate on its debt that is negative. The negative effective real rate reflects three factors: (1) inflation; (2) the interest payments on debt held by the Fed go back to the Treasury; and (3) Federal interest payments are subject to Federal income tax. If you plug all three factors into a spreadsheet, you get a negative real interest rate of around 1 percent. In other words, the Federal government right now is paid by the public for issuing debt. Only once the effective real rate turns positive, which usually happens through a fiscal crisis, politicians will be forced to cut spending and increase revenue.
What you are describing is the technique of financial repression, i.e. keeping interest rates artificially low to create a “stealth tax” that transfers wealth from savers and creditors to the government. That’s a big reason why the debt-to-GDP ratio dropped from about 120% in 1946 to about 30% by 1980. Over this period, the average real interest rate was -1.95%. Definitely a war against savers. Would the government like to replay this script? You betcha, if they could. Interesting though, it might be much harder to do it again for a number of reasons. One example is that the US debt profile is different now, with an average maturity of about 70 months. It is easier to inflate away 30 year debt via inflation than say 5 year debt (which will presumably roll over with interest rates driven higher because of inflation). Right now there seems to be a split in thinking on the FOMC, so it could go either way–no financial repression (raise rates to fight inflation and keep real interest rates positive and exacerbate federal debt), or use financial repression (keep rates low, let inflation ignite, and inflate down the real value of the federal deficit). But as to politicians cutting spending or increasing taxes–it’s just not going to happen any time soon.
Buffett recommend wonder of compound interest.
Currently interest payment is over 1 trillion.
Within a few years it will be double as inflation is spiking.
2015 – interest $402 Billions
2020 – interest $522 B
2024 – interest $1,133.00 B
It’s nearly triple in 10 years.
Sadly, US is not a creditor.
So debt to GDP doubled during Obama. I did not realize that.
Because of Bush II’s wars and the financial crises from deregulation. Weve essentially never recovered
Clinton scared the gliterati by balancing the budget.
He did his own research.
The trend changed when the US got off the gold standard.
The most telling thing as to why it’s unstoppable — you can only name 1 prominent Senator that consistently discusses it. And if America were to multi-vote, they’d land on the same name, Rand Paul (like his father before him). It won’t stop until it is forced to stop of its own weight and lack of a bid. It’s actually arithmetically embarrassing it has come this far.
We’re doomed; debt is exponentiating. Exponential math is powerful, when it works for you it’s wonderful, when it works against you, good luck, you’re trapped. The US is in the latter situation.
We are not doomed.
thank you Mish and various commentators on this site for helping me understand and expand my feeble knowledge of economics This article on this website help me understand: Where the Money Is Coming From
A market grinding to all-time highs against a softening economy has a funding source. M2 alone won’t show it. The plumbing — money-market funds, reverse repo drains, Treasury account flows, stablecoin issuance, foreign capital — is what’s actually paying for the rally.
https://www.warman.life/blog/2026-04-30-where-the-money-is-coming-from/
Its just a legal Ponzi scheme run by the govt
Amazingly all in the open – no deceit. Opt out if you wish.
Got gold?
The market grinding out all new highs is a symptom of the underlying problem as opposed to being based on strong fundamentals. When you see Trump’s beloved Dow running towards 100,000 at a rapid clip in the next few years, you’ll know it’s over for the US. Those holding savings and treasury bonds will be wiped out and there will be no social safety net to save them…state sponsored suicide will be their only viable option.
He misses dis-savings. The personal savings rate is currently only 3.6 percent.