> That said, the debt will be at an "unsustainable level" when people stop buying it. Treasury auctions can’t fail. I don’t mean failure is highly unlikely. I

> That said, the debt will be at an "unsustainable level" when people stop buying it. Treasury auctions can’t fail. I don’t mean failure is highly unlikely. I mean as the system is structured it’s operationally impossible for them to fail. There is no case where the primary dealers in aggregate can ever lack the reserves to make a market. Of course, nothing lasts forever. The US government’s currency issuance (a much clearer way to think of it than “debt”) depends on demand for that currency. Sure, oil is a part of it, but a much larger part is tax burden. It’s not an accident that the USA claims and has the authority to tax its citizens worldwide. That and there is a large highly diversified economy that does business in dollars, so you can get pretty much anything from computer chips to F-35s with USD so they’re generally useful to have. In fact, it would be operationally impossible for any other fiat currency to effectively replace the USD unless its issuer were willing to run sufficient deficits (“print money”/“issue debt”) in amounts sufficient to meet global demand for both payment clearing and holding financial reserves.