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Didn’t Stalin declare all debt with the USSR null and void? I wouldn’t be shocked to see Trump do something like this one day.
by liberte82 9y ago
Didn’t Stalin declare all debt with the USSR null and void? I wouldn’t be shocked to see Trump do something like this one day.
- ska 9y agoThat would be a pretty good way to crash the economy, it's not a move to pull unless you are already in bad shape. Also bear in mind a lot of that debt is held by Americans...
- liberte82 9y agoYeah I don’t mean it’d happen tomorrow, but if things in the world continued to get a lot crazier.
- btilly 9y agoUnder Obama the idea was floated of creating very large amounts of money to fund the federal government. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin for details.
- gowld 9y agoThat was an legal/accounting gimmick, underscored by the fiscal/economic point that minting a coin is fiscally equivalent to issuing debt.
- btilly 9y agoThe point of the gimmick is that doing it would reduce the net debt that the United States Government had, thereby keeping us away from the debt ceiling. In any case a fundamental problem is that we have rather more debt than we have any feasible way to pay. A very large part of that debt is held in the form of Treasury bonds issued to Social Security. Which leads to Social Security being financially solvent on paper for many decades to come. In fact it looks like once the Baby Boom retires, either Social Security is solvent or the US government is solvent, but not both.
- jacquesm 9y agoThe Ruble wasn't exactly the reserve currency and the major trading currency of the world at that point in time. If Trump did this 1929 would look good by comparison. You'd be buying bread with a wheelbarrow the week after.