The USA has a debt it can never repay of 61,161,741,000,000 according to the US national debt clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/). how long is it before our creditors come after us like they did Greece and force us to pay money we don't have. if they do I believe they will come after us by stopping all trade agreements and exports to us which would cripple us. plus china makes our guns and ammunition so going to war would be worst case scenario. I am really inexperienced on this topic and would like to know what you think.
The national debt is $18T. Of that, $4T or so is intergovernmental holdings, so the real national debt is around $14T. The bonds are sold on the open market so as long as we redeem them when they become due, there is nothing that can be done directly to us. The most china could do would be to sell off their US bonds on the open market at a loss to another third party purchaser. The bonds are not payable on demand. They are scheduled to come due at a certain time and only then is the US obligated to pay them off. We usually pay them off by borrowing the money from someone else. If nobody else is willing to buy them, then we can just print the money and buy them ourselves, at which point they go into intergovernmental holdings, which again, is not real debt, but an accounting mechanism.
the USA always pays interest owed on our bonds, and always pay's back the face value of bonds when cashed in. as long as we keep paying the billz, there is no reason to change the status quo. China likes our money.
Did you not look at the link to the national debt clock. our debt is no where near 14 trillion it is 61 trillion.
We have a debt of $18 trillion with an annual GDP of $16 trillion. That's like having a person with a $50k salary having a $56k mortgage. I'd like the debt to go away, I'm more worried about the deficit. But we're making out mortgage payments. Greece has a debt of $350 billion with an annual GDP of $238 billion. They had a mortgage payment due, they voted not to pay the mortgage this month. It's a different situation.
There is a difference between debt and unfunded liabilities. Get back to me when you want to have a real discussion.
No it's not. You're looking at a total of all debts in the U.S., including money we owe to each other. The amount of money owed by the nation is $18 trillion.
No I don't. The very first number in the top left-hand corner of your link is the US national debt. That is the only number relevant to any discussion as to the US and its creditors.
the USA has sold $18 trillion worth of uncollected bonds. that is our national debt. a lot of that is owed to ourselves. not even 10% is owed to China. ..don't forget, the USA is selling and buying back bonds every day, but we sell more than we buy back.
Lending money to the USA is like lending money to the Mob. You hope they pay you back but if they dont what are you supposed to do? No one can collect from the USA without our permission and no one can afford to close off all their trade to us either. If we defaulted it would be the economic ruin of the planet and we would see the worst depression in the history of the modern world.
