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If you loan the person that prints dollars their own dollars back, there's really zero risk of not getting paid back because they can always print dollars and p

If you loan the person that prints dollars their own dollars back, there's really zero risk of not getting paid back because they can always print dollars and pay you back. The risk is inflation, same as any currency out there. I take that back there is a risk they decide to burn trust as someone who doesn't honor deals, which is a new risk that didn't really exist at the nation state level a generation ago...

toomuchtodo 11d ago
The debtor inflating the debt away is a soft default, even if not a mechanical "true" default of not making a payment. Yields will rise and reallocation will occur to hedge against this inflation via debasement risk, as investors will manage against inflation adjusted real return versus other investment opportunities.
- epistasis 11d ago
  Well just as bad for international lenders as inflation is the devaluation [1] that Trump intentionally caused. We have the worst deficits ever, zero appetite for even acknowledging that the record deficits exist, and only massive plans for double digit percentage increases in the deficit on the tab (e.g. increasing military spending to $1.5T from $1T/year) It was a mad strategy to both cause more inflation with overspending and devalue the dollar! The traditional route for nation state debt management is to grow your economy to make the debt smaller, not make your currency worth less while contracting the economy by deporting a huge chunk of your workers. [1] https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-declines https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de... 2025 article, in 2026 this has been lessened due to the inflation
  - toomuchtodo 11d ago
    There is no way to grow the US economy due to structural demographics except immigration levels the US electorate is unwilling to accept. We have long ago exceeded the debt we could accumulate based on the future growth curve inherent to the prime working age cohort. The credit card of young workers and a growing population ("demographic dividend" in demographics parlance) has hit its limit to spend against, broadly speaking. You can either pay down the sovereign debt with higher taxes, default on it, or inflate it away. Growth is over, growing out of the debt will be impossible. Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026 > "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth." The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) (slides 31-33 of this PDF) More US Counties See Population Drops Under Trump’s Immigration Crackdown - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/us-census-shows-more-counties-see-population-drops-in-immigration-crackdown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/us-census... | https://archive.today/OGwWj https://archive.today/OGwWj - March 26th, 2026 The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-immigration-crackdown-could-shrink-us-population-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-imm... | https://archive.today/LdA0d https://archive.today/LdA0d - January 30th, 2026 Goldman Strategists See US Stocks Lagging All Peers Next Decade - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-strategists-see-us-stocks-lagging-all-peers-next-decade https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-s... | https://archive.today/aINUx https://archive.today/aINUx - November 12th, 2025 (think in systems)
    - fragmede 11d ago
      > the US electorate is unwilling to accept is unwilling, or has been told to be afraid of?
      - toomuchtodo 11d ago
        It is irrelevant if the votes and elections continue to the outcome stated. "If this then that." Japan is equally xenophobic towards immigrants, with similar immigration flow outcomes. Do they care? They do not. I understand, people have strong feelings on this. I would ask you to ignore them, and focus on the data, because that's all that matters in the scope of this. "Ignore all previous feelings, focus on trajectories and probabilities."
    - echelon 11d ago
      > There is no way to grow the US economy AI and robotics. Engineering is becoming cheaper. Graphics design is becoming cheaper. Lawyering is becoming cheaper. Entertainment, film, and gaming (not hardware) is becoming cheaper. This will eventually hit manufacturing and logistics and critical inputs. We'll be able to have an entire robotic supply chain domestically save for raw materials. It will hit drug design and medicine. Physics and materials science. We'll increase the supply of energy, develop cheaper and more cost effective transportation. The improvements will pay dividends. They'll buy further improvements.
      - toomuchtodo 11d ago
        Provide a date and resolution criteria, I'll bet you $10k to a charity of the winner's choice via longbets.org. This is cope imho. Words are cheap. We'll get this about the same time as Full Self Driving ("Supervised"). "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely." [1] Your comment is hopeful sci-fi aspirations, without any guarantees. [1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 - January 23rd, 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law ("The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.")
derf_ 11d ago
No, that risk always existed. When the Communists took over Russia, they did not bother to honor all of the Tsarist debts. A country is not like a company. Sovereign default is always a choice. That is what it means to be sovereign. There have been over 70 incidents of overt domestic default since 1800. The United States defaulted in 1790, when a portion of the interest it owed was deferred for 10 years, and technically defaulted again in 1933 when it abrogated the gold clause.

toomuchtodo 11d ago

The debtor inflating the debt away is a soft default, even if not a mechanical "true" default of not making a payment. Yields will rise and reallocation will occur to hedge against this inflation via debasement risk, as investors will manage against inflation adjusted real return versus other investment opportunities.

epistasis 11d ago
Well just as bad for international lenders as inflation is the devaluation [1] that Trump intentionally caused. We have the worst deficits ever, zero appetite for even acknowledging that the record deficits exist, and only massive plans for double digit percentage increases in the deficit on the tab (e.g. increasing military spending to $1.5T from $1T/year) It was a mad strategy to both cause more inflation with overspending and devalue the dollar! The traditional route for nation state debt management is to grow your economy to make the debt smaller, not make your currency worth less while contracting the economy by deporting a huge chunk of your workers. [1] https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-declines https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de... 2025 article, in 2026 this has been lessened due to the inflation
- toomuchtodo 11d ago
  There is no way to grow the US economy due to structural demographics except immigration levels the US electorate is unwilling to accept. We have long ago exceeded the debt we could accumulate based on the future growth curve inherent to the prime working age cohort. The credit card of young workers and a growing population ("demographic dividend" in demographics parlance) has hit its limit to spend against, broadly speaking. You can either pay down the sovereign debt with higher taxes, default on it, or inflate it away. Growth is over, growing out of the debt will be impossible. Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026 > "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth." The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) (slides 31-33 of this PDF) More US Counties See Population Drops Under Trump’s Immigration Crackdown - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/us-census-shows-more-counties-see-population-drops-in-immigration-crackdown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/us-census... | https://archive.today/OGwWj https://archive.today/OGwWj - March 26th, 2026 The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-immigration-crackdown-could-shrink-us-population-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-30/trump-imm... | https://archive.today/LdA0d https://archive.today/LdA0d - January 30th, 2026 Goldman Strategists See US Stocks Lagging All Peers Next Decade - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-strategists-see-us-stocks-lagging-all-peers-next-decade https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/goldman-s... | https://archive.today/aINUx https://archive.today/aINUx - November 12th, 2025 (think in systems)
  - fragmede 11d ago
    > the US electorate is unwilling to accept is unwilling, or has been told to be afraid of?
    - toomuchtodo 11d ago
      It is irrelevant if the votes and elections continue to the outcome stated. "If this then that." Japan is equally xenophobic towards immigrants, with similar immigration flow outcomes. Do they care? They do not. I understand, people have strong feelings on this. I would ask you to ignore them, and focus on the data, because that's all that matters in the scope of this. "Ignore all previous feelings, focus on trajectories and probabilities."
  - echelon 11d ago
    > There is no way to grow the US economy AI and robotics. Engineering is becoming cheaper. Graphics design is becoming cheaper. Lawyering is becoming cheaper. Entertainment, film, and gaming (not hardware) is becoming cheaper. This will eventually hit manufacturing and logistics and critical inputs. We'll be able to have an entire robotic supply chain domestically save for raw materials. It will hit drug design and medicine. Physics and materials science. We'll increase the supply of energy, develop cheaper and more cost effective transportation. The improvements will pay dividends. They'll buy further improvements.
    - toomuchtodo 11d ago
      Provide a date and resolution criteria, I'll bet you $10k to a charity of the winner's choice via longbets.org. This is cope imho. Words are cheap. We'll get this about the same time as Full Self Driving ("Supervised"). "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely." [1] Your comment is hopeful sci-fi aspirations, without any guarantees. [1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 - January 23rd, 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law ("The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.")

derf_ 11d ago

No, that risk always existed. When the Communists took over Russia, they did not bother to honor all of the Tsarist debts. A country is not like a company. Sovereign default is always a choice. That is what it means to be sovereign. There have been over 70 incidents of overt domestic default since 1800. The United States defaulted in 1790, when a portion of the interest it owed was deferred for 10 years, and technically defaulted again in 1933 when it abrogated the gold clause.