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> It's symbolism. It's not. This is where the financial rubber meets the road, actions have consequences, and the rest of the world is looking at the US as in

> It's symbolism. It's not. This is where the financial rubber meets the road, actions have consequences, and the rest of the world is looking at the US as increasingly unlikely to pay above inflation on its debts. The people managing the pension funds (if they are acting in good faith) really want to generate yield, and really want to preserve capital for the Danish people. They don't want to symbolically do those things, they want to actually do them. If treasuries were still part of what they believe to be the best strategy, they would still be holding them.

epolanski 9mo ago
There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money. Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.
- mym1990 9mo ago
  It will also be a global problem and not just US citizens, as the dollars underpins a vast amount of global wealth and trade.
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    Of course it would have consequences, but US has had multiple huge waves of inflations and very high interest rates, we've all survived.
    - Retric 9mo ago
      The US has never dealt with hyperinflation.
      - adventured 9mo ago
        The US isn't going to get hyperinflation. It's going to get a Japan style heat death. More and more wealth concentrated into low yielding debt, rather than invested into growth, while purchasing power is chewed up by persistent currency debasement. Japan never did suffer real deflation (that was a lie), it suffered massive inflation: they debased the Yen to garbage levels, drastically chopping down the standard of living of the typical Japanese person, wiping out their wealth, eroding the value of their output per capita. Only in a twisted, failed Keynesian experiment could one confuse such epic scale inflation with deflation. What they thought was deflation was an economic heat death due to their productive capital being tied up in low yield debt.
        Retric 9mo ago
        “There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money.” Trying to inflate away 40+ Trillion in debt would directly result in hyperinflation. > they debased the Yen to garbage levels Look at Yen to USD exchange rates and it’s clear they didn’t. “From 1991 to 2003, the Japanese economy, as measured by GDP, grew only 1.14% annually, while the average real growth rate between 2000 and 2010 was about 1%,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades Meanwhile the USD exchange rate in Jan 1988 was 127 vs 140 in 1998 vs 107 in 2008. It went up and down all through the 20 years of poor economic growth, but something else was clearly the issue.
        ptero 9mo ago
        It did not go into a hyperinflation after the WW2, when the US debt load as a share of GDP was even higher than today; and deflated in the same way US is likely to do it now (bond rates forced way below inflation with yield control). I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.
        Retric 9mo ago
        The post WWII economic boom outgrew the debt thus dramatically decreased the debt to GDP ratio. The US is unlikely to find itself the only industrialized nation without massively damaged infrastructure again anytime soon.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        bad_haircut72 9mo ago
        Actually I think this is their plan... :(
        mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
        Have you been to Japan? Salaries are low, but stuff is crazy cheap (even after the past year of inflation). People are still feeling whiplash from the fact that prices can change at all. Many menus and items have prices that have barely changed since the early 1990s, and most of those changes were to add sales taxes to the menu. The exchange rate of the yen has dropped recently by a lot, but the inflation experience there has been the exact opposite of America's.
- mcny 9mo ago
  I don't think it is that easy though. If you are simply trying to pay off existing debt sure, but we constantly need new debt as well so there is a limit to how much money we can print.
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    You obviously cut the budget and raise taxes.
    - Retric 9mo ago
      If that was actually being considered you don’t need to default in the first place.
    - readthenotes1 9mo ago
      "Not that easy" & EPolanski replies with 2 things the US Congress almost never does
- azinman2 9mo ago
  You’re assuming the people in charge are sane, rationale, and value past decisions that have worked out. It’s quite clear with the now likely permanent damage to NATO this isn’t the case.
  - adventured 9mo ago
    You're assuming NATO is somehow critical for the US. It is not. NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them. The US had the world's largest economy six decades before NATO existed. China is growing into a superpower entirely without a NATO-like participation. NATO is primarily beneficial to European stability. The US doesn't need NATO to defend itself at all.
    - jacquesm 9mo ago
      This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.
      - OrvalWintermute 9mo ago
        The Euros also underfunded their defense obligations and received huge amounts of US investment in facilities, enabling them to upfund social programs, socialized healthcare and most egregiously 8 - 12 week vacations which are completely unheard of in the US.
        jacquesm 9mo ago
        You are spending too much time in an echo chamber if you think that those things that are unheard of in the US could not have been done in the US. They could have been, but it would have required a different kind of path than you chose. The EU has chosen to try to cooperate rather than to be at war all the time and it looks like that may have been a wrong bet but that is mostly because first one (Russia) and now another (USA) party have reneged on the deals that were in place.
- spamizbad 9mo ago
  > There's no chance US will default on its debts Until Trump says he's going to, then his boosters will declare its a genius maneuver and actually its Joe Biden's fault (Joe made him do it!)
  - eggy 9mo ago
    Do you the think the EU and its individual country members from 1949 to present carried their fair share of the NATO spending ($55 to $60T), or troops and equipment deployments, or did they "default" on their side of the treaty? The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025. That's 9.8T in 8 years (2018 included). Our soldiers, not theirs, carried the weight. If you go per capita, The US has spent an overage of $13 to $16T in 2025 dollars. Let's credit the account for that and see who owes who...
    - beardyw 9mo ago
      The intention of NATO is mutual support. Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?
      - kyboren 9mo ago
        1. "The decision to invoke NATO's collective self-defense provisions was undertaken at NATO's own initiative, without a request by the United States, and occurred despite the hesitation of Germany, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingenc... 2. "I helped pass the bucket when you were putting out that brush fire, and now you tell me you won't run into my burning house to save my children?!" 3. Mutual support is more like "I'll help you with your main adversary and you'll help me with mine". What we have now is "Fuck no I won't help you with your main adversary, we oughta stay out of it--wait, how dare you suggest you won't fight my main adversary for me?!"
        beardyw 9mo ago
- markus_zhang 9mo ago
  US doesn’t really pay back the principle — States usually roll over. So there is a concern that the future batch of US treasury is less reliable. Plus there is also the risk of a depreciating USD.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  If the US invades Greenland, and is at war with Denmark, will it still pay its debts to a Dane?
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    I'm quite sure that debts are paid in any case because not paying them would be a disaster for the bond issuer. The procedure in times of war, at least by the US treasury is to put the payments in a blocked account that is then given to the citizen of the opposing country post war. This is also why russian assets in US/EU banks, e.g., are only frozen: doing any other thing with them would instantly trigger the entire world to liquidate their holdings. Would Saudis or Indians or Danes hold assets that can be confiscated for geopolitical reasons?
    - dh2022 9mo ago
      Not quite... US can freeze certain assets. It did that for Iran for example. It froze the assets for a few decades (from 1979 until 2016). In 2016 it paid back the principal and interest: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-and-1-7-billion-sorting-out-the-details/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-an...
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  We're at a crossroads: If you don't behave like you will pay your debts then people are going to assume that you will not. Before you know it you won't be able to pay your debts even if you wanted to.
- amarant 9mo ago
  At this point, nobody trusts the US to pay anything. I don't have an opinion on whether they'll be able to pay their debts, but that's largely irrelevant. I wouldn't bet on them actually paying anything. You can't trust America
- justin66 9mo ago
  As far as I know, Trump is unique among American leaders in having mused stupidly in public about not paying all holders of US Treasury debt. But I'm sure he would not do anything crazy. That's just inconceivable.
  - OrvalWintermute 9mo ago
    The Chinese still owe the US for railroad bonds. A year or two of NATO countries increased contribution doesn't make up for decades of underinvestment ripoffs.
  - _carbyau_ 9mo ago
    > That's just inconceivable. The finance world: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
- ben_w 9mo ago
  This "solution" looks like the same problem to people holding the debt. Ergo, they increasingly do not want to hold that debt.
- sorokod 9mo ago
  There is no chance US will need to take Greenland by force ( financial or military) , all it has to do is to increase the number of troops already stationed there by agreement. Yet here we are.
  - tokai 9mo ago
    >all it has to do is to increase the number of troops Demonstrably wrong as Trump announced tariffs on the countries sending troops to Greenland.
    - vharuck 9mo ago
      I think the above poster was trying to say, "there is no reason" for the US to claim Greenland. We have a treaty that allows us to build our military bases on the territory. If we want to do security stuff there, we already can.
      - inglor_cz 9mo ago
        The reason is that Trump wants to recolor the map and make the US bigger that it is, and be known as the one who did it. Nothing deeper than that. Ironically, that will make some projects harder, especially if US laws such as NEPA start being applied on the Greenland territory. Hello environmental lawsuits from all sides.
        N19PEDL2 9mo ago
        Indeed, Trump seems to be suffering from Putin syndrome: he thinks that the best way to make the United States (and himself) glorious is through territorial expansion.
    - xorcist 9mo ago
      Which more than well illustrates the absurd claims that the US needs Greenland because Europe places too little military power there.
- bryanrasmussen 9mo ago
  >problems..as well as US Bond holders right, why would you want to hold US treasury bonds especially if the value of the US dollar is being destroyed? Even if I believed that the US wouldn't default on its debts, or come up with flimsy arguments why it shouldn't have to pay all of them https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-... it just doesn't seem like a super-smart investment at the moment.
  - flowerthoughts 9mo ago
    If you sell the bonds, you'll end up with a lot of USD. If you try to sell that... You run into liquidity issues. Would probably cause a spike in gold prices as a default non-USD position. Oh, wait...
- slipnslider 9mo ago
  >all it has to do is to print more money. Isn't that considered a "technical" default since you basically burned every debt holder by inflating your way out of debt? Almost like a TKO vs KO in boxing?
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    It is and for that reason it does not work.
- baby_souffle 9mo ago
  > There's no chance US will default on its debts, Why not? It has happened* before therefore it can/will happen again. * (more or less). I would count significant debt restructure (1790) or replacing promised gold with paper (1860-1930, 1970) or even a significant delay (1979) as a default... even if it was temporary in 1979.
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    None of those were defaults. The US has never defaulted on its debt, as never did Germany or Italy (speaking of state issued bonds, not war reparations).
  - stephen_g 9mo ago
    The bonds are only redeemable for USD. The Fed can always produce USD. So the Fed can always buy back any and all US bonds in existence. They would have to actively choose to default.
- testing22321 9mo ago
  Defaulting on the debt would be a great “emergency” that requires elections to be cancelled…
  - outside1234 9mo ago
    Thankfully elections are more or less impossible to cancel since they are scheduled by the states
    - wrs 9mo ago
      Including the states that have replaced their election officials with Trump loyalists?
    - testing22321 9mo ago
      And having armed federal agents at the polling booths won’t be a problem? Or declaring it “stolen”, or simply ignoring the results, or refusing to leave office. None of those are much of a stretch from all the laws already broken repeatedly
- IX-103 9mo ago
  Are you disagreeing with the parent post or agreeing with them? I first read your comment as if it was disagreeing with them but then noticed the parenthetical "(as well as US bond holders)" in your comment, which seems to support parent's position.
- BurningFrog 9mo ago
  Dollar inflation is a way for the US to default on its debts. "Here are the dollars we owe you. They're worth half as much as the ones you paid us."
- anigbrowl 9mo ago
  https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plays-down-consequences-us-default-could-be-maybe-nothing-2023-05-11/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plays-down-consequenc... Now, Trump is an opportunist and in the psat his talk of default has been a way to throw rhetorical stones at his political opponents and keep himself in the news while he was out of office. Back in office, he has sought to project some kind of commitment to fiscal responsibility and financial stability. But let's be real here, he's making threats against a fellow NATO member on the daily and openly saying he wants to annex territory. If he gets it into his head that the Danes or the EU are being mean to him and hurting his fee-fees, he's fully capable of responding in irrational fashion and has a toxic personality cult that will back him up. Be honest, if I took this month's headlines and took a time machine a year into the past, would 2025 you have believed my warnings about what would be happening 1 year into the second Trump admin?
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    I'm seeing it all and I still can't believe it. The most unbelievable to me is that the Senate and Congress seem to have no red lines at all.
    - bad_haircut72 9mo ago
      The senate has abdicated the power to declare war, like what else is left in terms of real power? There is no seperation of powers any more, its everything the founders feared coming true
- alwillis 9mo ago
  > There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money. The US defaulting on its debt seems to be the plan. The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy -- https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-the-plan https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-t...
rjzzleep 9mo ago
The EU threw all its baskets into a war it didn't need to fight, destroyed its energy independence, it's weapons, it's airdefense and huge parts of its air force. I don't think they have a lot of cards to play. There an interesting analysis on whether the EUs threats on financial markets actually bear any meaning here: https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/2013314168250675456 https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/2013314168250675456 Edit: March 2022 peace deal that Boris Johnson sabotaged https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/...
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  What nonsense. We have plenty of cards to play and if 'having cards to play' is what stood between the USA and the relationship we had - or rather that we thought we had - for the last 70 years stood for something then that should not have been a factor in the first place. This whole thing is due to one country not playing by the rulebook because they think they're big enough to fuck over the world. Guess what? No single country is big enough for that. Trump is way out of his depth when it comes to statesmanship and has replaced it with brinkmanship, that's not a valid substitute unless what you're looking for a a disaster.
- cuu508 9mo ago
  What war are you referring to?
- jonkoops 9mo ago
  It is a war we must fight now, and must continue to fight. It is a war against oppression, against autocrats squishing their population for servitude. If nobody steps up to protect Democratic values, and the freedom of the people for self-governance, it is a slippery slope to hell.
  - rjzzleep 9mo ago
    If you really needed to fight, what you would have done was build a couple nuclear power plants, build some factories using Russian resources that they were giving you cheap, churn out some weapons and THEN go for war. What it did instead was watch the US blow up it's pipeline, harakiri its own nuclear power reactors, rent mobile Norwegian LNG terminals and make itself completely dependent on American weapons and Energy. This is all preformative nonsense of EU elites that despise the European public and call Trump daddy to continue riding the Eurocrat gravy train. It's actually good for Europe that this mess is coming to an end. But the price was way too high and unnecessary.
aaroninsf 9mo ago
The markets certainly don't think it's symbolism.
- lumost 9mo ago
  The "TACO" trade only works as a pump and dump for insiders for as long as the counterparties allow it to. It does not make sense for the G7 to support the enrichment of the American president for long. Why would anyone believe that this is the last time a president will use Tariff threats in the next 12 months? it was reasonable to negotiate last year based on the observation that trade imbalances had been a growing issue for the American people. Using trade as a lever for territorial concessions is almost certainly a hard red line.
csense 9mo ago
> really want to generate yield Treasuries are not the best way to do this. Almost any investment is better than yeeting a substantial portion of your net worth into Treasuries or a savings account. > really want to preserve capital Fiat currency, or bonds that promise payouts in fiat currency, are excellent for short-term capital preservation and terrible for long-term capital preservation, as every government that uses fiat currency has succumbed to the temptation to print more of it whenever it seems expedient. Gold or Bitcoins are far better for preservation of capital.
- actionfromafar 9mo ago
  Burma Shave moment on the last line.
- fyredge 9mo ago
  Potential returns may be better elsewhere but that comes with increased risk and reasonable funds balance their portfolio between returns and risk. Bonds are considered low risk, but with the fiscal policy of the current US administration, the risk may have gone beyond the Danish's appetite. Bitcoin on the other hand, which sane person would invest in such a volatile product as preservation of capital?
PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
> This is where the financial rubber meets the road, actions have consequences This is $100M. No one will notice it. Be a bit realistic here. Maybe you have no skin in the game, so you can be idealistic.
- mmkos 9mo ago
  I fully expect this comment to age like milk and soon.
  - bawolff 9mo ago
    Even if it does, he still has a point. The first pebble that forms an avalanche is often symbolic. The symbol influencing others is how we get the avalanche. This move by itself doesn't do much. The question is if it will influence others.
- watwut 9mo ago
  > This is $100M. No one will notice it. That does not mean it is "symbolic". It is very real choice made out of rational reasoning. There is nothing to suggest it was not meant to be a symbolic gesture.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> debts This is shoehorning. We’re threatening to go to war with Denmark. You don’t want to be owed money by folks who are attacking you.
- autoexec 9mo ago
  > We’re threatening to go to war with Denmark. We're threatening to go to war with Denmark and all of their allies.
- Eupolemos 9mo ago
  A counter argument is that this is just a small pension company. If all Danish Pension Funds etc. decide that we better divest because of imminent war, we are talking way, way more money. I have no idea how much, but Danish pensions are big. This may indeed be a warning shot.
  - jacobgorm 9mo ago
    PFA, the largest private Danish pension fund already started reducing exposure to USD and UST last year https://www.pfa.dk/news-archive/2026/01/19/10/21/pfa-anbefaler-at-slaa-det-lange-lys-til/?icid=news_pfanyheder_trumpstoldtruslermodeuropapfaanbefaleratslaadetlangelystil https://www.pfa.dk/news-archive/2026/01/19/10/21/pfa-anbefal...

epolanski 9mo ago

There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money. Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.

mym1990 9mo ago
It will also be a global problem and not just US citizens, as the dollars underpins a vast amount of global wealth and trade.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  Of course it would have consequences, but US has had multiple huge waves of inflations and very high interest rates, we've all survived.
  - Retric 9mo ago
    The US has never dealt with hyperinflation.
    - adventured 9mo ago
      The US isn't going to get hyperinflation. It's going to get a Japan style heat death. More and more wealth concentrated into low yielding debt, rather than invested into growth, while purchasing power is chewed up by persistent currency debasement. Japan never did suffer real deflation (that was a lie), it suffered massive inflation: they debased the Yen to garbage levels, drastically chopping down the standard of living of the typical Japanese person, wiping out their wealth, eroding the value of their output per capita. Only in a twisted, failed Keynesian experiment could one confuse such epic scale inflation with deflation. What they thought was deflation was an economic heat death due to their productive capital being tied up in low yield debt.
      - Retric 9mo ago
        “There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money.” Trying to inflate away 40+ Trillion in debt would directly result in hyperinflation. > they debased the Yen to garbage levels Look at Yen to USD exchange rates and it’s clear they didn’t. “From 1991 to 2003, the Japanese economy, as measured by GDP, grew only 1.14% annually, while the average real growth rate between 2000 and 2010 was about 1%,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades Meanwhile the USD exchange rate in Jan 1988 was 127 vs 140 in 1998 vs 107 in 2008. It went up and down all through the 20 years of poor economic growth, but something else was clearly the issue.
        ptero 9mo ago
        It did not go into a hyperinflation after the WW2, when the US debt load as a share of GDP was even higher than today; and deflated in the same way US is likely to do it now (bond rates forced way below inflation with yield control). I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.
        Retric 9mo ago
        The post WWII economic boom outgrew the debt thus dramatically decreased the debt to GDP ratio. The US is unlikely to find itself the only industrialized nation without massively damaged infrastructure again anytime soon.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        bad_haircut72 9mo ago
        Actually I think this is their plan... :(
      - mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
        Have you been to Japan? Salaries are low, but stuff is crazy cheap (even after the past year of inflation). People are still feeling whiplash from the fact that prices can change at all. Many menus and items have prices that have barely changed since the early 1990s, and most of those changes were to add sales taxes to the menu. The exchange rate of the yen has dropped recently by a lot, but the inflation experience there has been the exact opposite of America's.
mcny 9mo ago
I don't think it is that easy though. If you are simply trying to pay off existing debt sure, but we constantly need new debt as well so there is a limit to how much money we can print.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  You obviously cut the budget and raise taxes.
  - Retric 9mo ago
    If that was actually being considered you don’t need to default in the first place.
  - readthenotes1 9mo ago
    "Not that easy" & EPolanski replies with 2 things the US Congress almost never does
azinman2 9mo ago
You’re assuming the people in charge are sane, rationale, and value past decisions that have worked out. It’s quite clear with the now likely permanent damage to NATO this isn’t the case.
- adventured 9mo ago
  You're assuming NATO is somehow critical for the US. It is not. NATO is critical for the European powers (those not named Russia). The US doesn't require it. The US doesn't need to defend Europe any longer. And it's clear the Europeans don't want the US there, so it works out great. Europe can boost its defense spending by ~$300 billion to make up the difference, or not, whatever they choose to do is up to them. The US had the world's largest economy six decades before NATO existed. China is growing into a superpower entirely without a NATO-like participation. NATO is primarily beneficial to European stability. The US doesn't need NATO to defend itself at all.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    This is not a one sided thing. The US has been allowed to do a lot of things under the NATO umbrella that it benefited from (such as: selling a vast quantity of arms). Soft power is a thing and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization came into being to deal with exactly the kind of situation that we are viewing today. To see the US bow out, and in fact threatening allies is duplicitous at best.
    - OrvalWintermute 9mo ago
      The Euros also underfunded their defense obligations and received huge amounts of US investment in facilities, enabling them to upfund social programs, socialized healthcare and most egregiously 8 - 12 week vacations which are completely unheard of in the US.
      - jacquesm 9mo ago
        You are spending too much time in an echo chamber if you think that those things that are unheard of in the US could not have been done in the US. They could have been, but it would have required a different kind of path than you chose. The EU has chosen to try to cooperate rather than to be at war all the time and it looks like that may have been a wrong bet but that is mostly because first one (Russia) and now another (USA) party have reneged on the deals that were in place.
spamizbad 9mo ago
> There's no chance US will default on its debts Until Trump says he's going to, then his boosters will declare its a genius maneuver and actually its Joe Biden's fault (Joe made him do it!)
- eggy 9mo ago
  Do you the think the EU and its individual country members from 1949 to present carried their fair share of the NATO spending ($55 to $60T), or troops and equipment deployments, or did they "default" on their side of the treaty? The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025. That's 9.8T in 8 years (2018 included). Our soldiers, not theirs, carried the weight. If you go per capita, The US has spent an overage of $13 to $16T in 2025 dollars. Let's credit the account for that and see who owes who...
  - beardyw 9mo ago
    The intention of NATO is mutual support. Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?
    - kyboren 9mo ago
      1. "The decision to invoke NATO's collective self-defense provisions was undertaken at NATO's own initiative, without a request by the United States, and occurred despite the hesitation of Germany, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingenc... 2. "I helped pass the bucket when you were putting out that brush fire, and now you tell me you won't run into my burning house to save my children?!" 3. Mutual support is more like "I'll help you with your main adversary and you'll help me with mine". What we have now is "Fuck no I won't help you with your main adversary, we oughta stay out of it--wait, how dare you suggest you won't fight my main adversary for me?!"
      - beardyw 9mo ago
markus_zhang 9mo ago
US doesn’t really pay back the principle — States usually roll over. So there is a concern that the future batch of US treasury is less reliable. Plus there is also the risk of a depreciating USD.
jimnotgym 9mo ago
If the US invades Greenland, and is at war with Denmark, will it still pay its debts to a Dane?
- epolanski 9mo ago
  I'm quite sure that debts are paid in any case because not paying them would be a disaster for the bond issuer. The procedure in times of war, at least by the US treasury is to put the payments in a blocked account that is then given to the citizen of the opposing country post war. This is also why russian assets in US/EU banks, e.g., are only frozen: doing any other thing with them would instantly trigger the entire world to liquidate their holdings. Would Saudis or Indians or Danes hold assets that can be confiscated for geopolitical reasons?
  - dh2022 9mo ago
    Not quite... US can freeze certain assets. It did that for Iran for example. It froze the assets for a few decades (from 1979 until 2016). In 2016 it paid back the principal and interest: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-and-1-7-billion-sorting-out-the-details/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-an...
jacquesm 9mo ago
We're at a crossroads: If you don't behave like you will pay your debts then people are going to assume that you will not. Before you know it you won't be able to pay your debts even if you wanted to.
amarant 9mo ago
At this point, nobody trusts the US to pay anything. I don't have an opinion on whether they'll be able to pay their debts, but that's largely irrelevant. I wouldn't bet on them actually paying anything. You can't trust America
justin66 9mo ago
As far as I know, Trump is unique among American leaders in having mused stupidly in public about not paying all holders of US Treasury debt. But I'm sure he would not do anything crazy. That's just inconceivable.
- OrvalWintermute 9mo ago
  The Chinese still owe the US for railroad bonds. A year or two of NATO countries increased contribution doesn't make up for decades of underinvestment ripoffs.
- _carbyau_ 9mo ago
  > That's just inconceivable. The finance world: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
ben_w 9mo ago
This "solution" looks like the same problem to people holding the debt. Ergo, they increasingly do not want to hold that debt.
sorokod 9mo ago
There is no chance US will need to take Greenland by force ( financial or military) , all it has to do is to increase the number of troops already stationed there by agreement. Yet here we are.
- tokai 9mo ago
  >all it has to do is to increase the number of troops Demonstrably wrong as Trump announced tariffs on the countries sending troops to Greenland.
  - vharuck 9mo ago
    I think the above poster was trying to say, "there is no reason" for the US to claim Greenland. We have a treaty that allows us to build our military bases on the territory. If we want to do security stuff there, we already can.
    - inglor_cz 9mo ago
      The reason is that Trump wants to recolor the map and make the US bigger that it is, and be known as the one who did it. Nothing deeper than that. Ironically, that will make some projects harder, especially if US laws such as NEPA start being applied on the Greenland territory. Hello environmental lawsuits from all sides.
      - N19PEDL2 9mo ago
        Indeed, Trump seems to be suffering from Putin syndrome: he thinks that the best way to make the United States (and himself) glorious is through territorial expansion.
  - xorcist 9mo ago
    Which more than well illustrates the absurd claims that the US needs Greenland because Europe places too little military power there.
bryanrasmussen 9mo ago
>problems..as well as US Bond holders right, why would you want to hold US treasury bonds especially if the value of the US dollar is being destroyed? Even if I believed that the US wouldn't default on its debts, or come up with flimsy arguments why it shouldn't have to pay all of them https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-... it just doesn't seem like a super-smart investment at the moment.
- flowerthoughts 9mo ago
  If you sell the bonds, you'll end up with a lot of USD. If you try to sell that... You run into liquidity issues. Would probably cause a spike in gold prices as a default non-USD position. Oh, wait...
slipnslider 9mo ago
>all it has to do is to print more money. Isn't that considered a "technical" default since you basically burned every debt holder by inflating your way out of debt? Almost like a TKO vs KO in boxing?
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  It is and for that reason it does not work.
baby_souffle 9mo ago
> There's no chance US will default on its debts, Why not? It has happened* before therefore it can/will happen again. * (more or less). I would count significant debt restructure (1790) or replacing promised gold with paper (1860-1930, 1970) or even a significant delay (1979) as a default... even if it was temporary in 1979.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  None of those were defaults. The US has never defaulted on its debt, as never did Germany or Italy (speaking of state issued bonds, not war reparations).
- stephen_g 9mo ago
  The bonds are only redeemable for USD. The Fed can always produce USD. So the Fed can always buy back any and all US bonds in existence. They would have to actively choose to default.
testing22321 9mo ago
Defaulting on the debt would be a great “emergency” that requires elections to be cancelled…
- outside1234 9mo ago
  Thankfully elections are more or less impossible to cancel since they are scheduled by the states
  - wrs 9mo ago
    Including the states that have replaced their election officials with Trump loyalists?
  - testing22321 9mo ago
    And having armed federal agents at the polling booths won’t be a problem? Or declaring it “stolen”, or simply ignoring the results, or refusing to leave office. None of those are much of a stretch from all the laws already broken repeatedly
IX-103 9mo ago
Are you disagreeing with the parent post or agreeing with them? I first read your comment as if it was disagreeing with them but then noticed the parenthetical "(as well as US bond holders)" in your comment, which seems to support parent's position.
BurningFrog 9mo ago
Dollar inflation is a way for the US to default on its debts. "Here are the dollars we owe you. They're worth half as much as the ones you paid us."
anigbrowl 9mo ago
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plays-down-consequences-us-default-could-be-maybe-nothing-2023-05-11/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plays-down-consequenc... Now, Trump is an opportunist and in the psat his talk of default has been a way to throw rhetorical stones at his political opponents and keep himself in the news while he was out of office. Back in office, he has sought to project some kind of commitment to fiscal responsibility and financial stability. But let's be real here, he's making threats against a fellow NATO member on the daily and openly saying he wants to annex territory. If he gets it into his head that the Danes or the EU are being mean to him and hurting his fee-fees, he's fully capable of responding in irrational fashion and has a toxic personality cult that will back him up. Be honest, if I took this month's headlines and took a time machine a year into the past, would 2025 you have believed my warnings about what would be happening 1 year into the second Trump admin?
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  I'm seeing it all and I still can't believe it. The most unbelievable to me is that the Senate and Congress seem to have no red lines at all.
  - bad_haircut72 9mo ago
    The senate has abdicated the power to declare war, like what else is left in terms of real power? There is no seperation of powers any more, its everything the founders feared coming true
alwillis 9mo ago
> There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money. The US defaulting on its debt seems to be the plan. The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy -- https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-the-plan https://umairhaque.substack.com/p/the-mar-a-lago-accord-or-t...

rjzzleep 9mo ago

The EU threw all its baskets into a war it didn't need to fight, destroyed its energy independence, it's weapons, it's airdefense and huge parts of its air force. I don't think they have a lot of cards to play. There an interesting analysis on whether the EUs threats on financial markets actually bear any meaning here: https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/2013314168250675456 https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/2013314168250675456 Edit: March 2022 peace deal that Boris Johnson sabotaged https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-ceasefire-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/15/world/europe/...

jacquesm 9mo ago
What nonsense. We have plenty of cards to play and if 'having cards to play' is what stood between the USA and the relationship we had - or rather that we thought we had - for the last 70 years stood for something then that should not have been a factor in the first place. This whole thing is due to one country not playing by the rulebook because they think they're big enough to fuck over the world. Guess what? No single country is big enough for that. Trump is way out of his depth when it comes to statesmanship and has replaced it with brinkmanship, that's not a valid substitute unless what you're looking for a a disaster.
cuu508 9mo ago
What war are you referring to?
jonkoops 9mo ago
It is a war we must fight now, and must continue to fight. It is a war against oppression, against autocrats squishing their population for servitude. If nobody steps up to protect Democratic values, and the freedom of the people for self-governance, it is a slippery slope to hell.
- rjzzleep 9mo ago
  If you really needed to fight, what you would have done was build a couple nuclear power plants, build some factories using Russian resources that they were giving you cheap, churn out some weapons and THEN go for war. What it did instead was watch the US blow up it's pipeline, harakiri its own nuclear power reactors, rent mobile Norwegian LNG terminals and make itself completely dependent on American weapons and Energy. This is all preformative nonsense of EU elites that despise the European public and call Trump daddy to continue riding the Eurocrat gravy train. It's actually good for Europe that this mess is coming to an end. But the price was way too high and unnecessary.

aaroninsf 9mo ago

The markets certainly don't think it's symbolism.

lumost 9mo ago
The "TACO" trade only works as a pump and dump for insiders for as long as the counterparties allow it to. It does not make sense for the G7 to support the enrichment of the American president for long. Why would anyone believe that this is the last time a president will use Tariff threats in the next 12 months? it was reasonable to negotiate last year based on the observation that trade imbalances had been a growing issue for the American people. Using trade as a lever for territorial concessions is almost certainly a hard red line.

csense 9mo ago

> really want to generate yield Treasuries are not the best way to do this. Almost any investment is better than yeeting a substantial portion of your net worth into Treasuries or a savings account. > really want to preserve capital Fiat currency, or bonds that promise payouts in fiat currency, are excellent for short-term capital preservation and terrible for long-term capital preservation, as every government that uses fiat currency has succumbed to the temptation to print more of it whenever it seems expedient. Gold or Bitcoins are far better for preservation of capital.

actionfromafar 9mo ago
Burma Shave moment on the last line.
fyredge 9mo ago
Potential returns may be better elsewhere but that comes with increased risk and reasonable funds balance their portfolio between returns and risk. Bonds are considered low risk, but with the fiscal policy of the current US administration, the risk may have gone beyond the Danish's appetite. Bitcoin on the other hand, which sane person would invest in such a volatile product as preservation of capital?

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago

> This is where the financial rubber meets the road, actions have consequences This is $100M. No one will notice it. Be a bit realistic here. Maybe you have no skin in the game, so you can be idealistic.

mmkos 9mo ago
I fully expect this comment to age like milk and soon.
- bawolff 9mo ago
  Even if it does, he still has a point. The first pebble that forms an avalanche is often symbolic. The symbol influencing others is how we get the avalanche. This move by itself doesn't do much. The question is if it will influence others.
watwut 9mo ago
> This is $100M. No one will notice it. That does not mean it is "symbolic". It is very real choice made out of rational reasoning. There is nothing to suggest it was not meant to be a symbolic gesture.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> debts This is shoehorning. We’re threatening to go to war with Denmark. You don’t want to be owed money by folks who are attacking you.

autoexec 9mo ago
> We’re threatening to go to war with Denmark. We're threatening to go to war with Denmark and all of their allies.
Eupolemos 9mo ago
A counter argument is that this is just a small pension company. If all Danish Pension Funds etc. decide that we better divest because of imminent war, we are talking way, way more money. I have no idea how much, but Danish pensions are big. This may indeed be a warning shot.
- jacobgorm 9mo ago
  PFA, the largest private Danish pension fund already started reducing exposure to USD and UST last year https://www.pfa.dk/news-archive/2026/01/19/10/21/pfa-anbefaler-at-slaa-det-lange-lys-til/?icid=news_pfanyheder_trumpstoldtruslermodeuropapfaanbefaleratslaadetlangelystil https://www.pfa.dk/news-archive/2026/01/19/10/21/pfa-anbefal...