Fair enough, we can agree to disagree about first principles. It just leaves me a bit nonplussed, as if I came to you and started to preach to you about how a c

Fair enough, we can agree to disagree about first principles. It just leaves me a bit nonplussed, as if I came to you and started to preach to you about how a computer processor contains sentient elves. I could probably make some workable predictions from that statement, but by overestimating the inherent autonomy of a deterministic processor I'd also make some statements you would hold to be ludicrous. To each his own domain, I cannot really attack your assumptions, just what you derive from them; of your principles and beliefs I can only provide commentary, and on the topic I shall be as succinct as I can. To wit, the “phantom money” you mention seems to allude to allude to a contrast to non-phantom money, supposedly some kind of “real stuff” that meets your intuition of being a unilateral asset. National debt for a country that can issue bonds denominated in currency it itself controls is not at all comparable to the debt accrued by the private household or firm. Through varying levels of inflation, that debt-load becomes more manageable over time, a process I am sure you are aware of and conversant with. Insofar as it is a debt repayable mostly to the citizens and institutions of the nation itself, denominated in a currency that the sovereign government controls, it is hardly ever going to be unplayable. Nor will there be wholesale plunder of savings through hyper-inflation or other means... it's usually a measured process. And the debt provides a place for savers to safely park their excess liquidity. If they did not have the national debt to fund, they would go on the hunt for other, riskier assets to use as interest-bearing vehicles, and they'd bid down the price of risky financial assets and achieve lower expected returns as a result. Macroeconomics is surprisingly adept at unravelling how capital flows flux through a body politic. We tend to explain retroactively. Now people are putting themselves out there making fairly crisp, and as-yet un-falsified predictions of a crash on the way... we'll see if I was right or wrong to be convinced by their argument.