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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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United States | News & Politics
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I did read the article, but I also understand other factors that the article doesn't talk about. So, I can use that broader understanding to contextualize what high levels of debt mean in practice.
The debt, and payments on interest, might cause more inflationary pressure than eliminating it would cause.
I think they could just print 39 trillion dollar coins and instantly pay off the debt.
The key context is how the system actually works though. The government doesn’t just print cash and hand it out. Typically, they issue Treasury bonds instead with the understanding that the government will pay back later with interest. These bonds are then bought up by pension funds, foreign governments, big financial institutions, etc.
When the government prints too much money or issues too many bonds, the bond holders start getting awful nervous about their investment. They wonder if the dollars they get back in ten years will be worth the paper they’re printed on. So they demand a higher yield to cover the risk. It’s not unlike a credit card company jacking up your rate when you miss a payment.
Rising bond yields, in turn, make the government’s interest payments go up. Bigger and bigger checks need to be paid to the people who lent the money, which reduces the operational budget. Today, that sum is sitting at something like a trillion dollars a year. It’s money that’s just flowing out of the treasury and straight into the accounts of bondholders.
The recent historical money printing (bonds have to be repaid, and not technically printing) is QE = Quantitative Easing. The Fed makes up money, and uses it to buy real bonds, under the theoretical possible future of reselling the bonds later. It gives the interest paid on those bonds back to the treasury. While the activity is absurd, it tends to inflate bond prices (lower interest rates) because easy money is to buy bonds before Fed buys them back from you.
Yup, that's also a mechanic that's being increasingly used. And with more money available and cheaper credit stimulates demand for goods, services, and assets. So you end up with increased amount of money chasing a relatively stable supply, which ultimately pushes general price levels higher, hence the process is inflationary.
This seems like an entirely self-created problem by designing a system where the government doesn't just print cash.
Of course, but it works in the interest of the oligarchs, so here we are.
I imagine a system where the government just prints cash, would have a whole slew of other problems and issues, and would likely be less stable/viable than the current mess. The current approach has flaws, but if managed properly, remains viable for a long time -- most of the flaws that become existential threats, only show up after years of neglect or willful corruption, such as in the USA.