US Debt Mocks GDP With Sound of Silence

History tells us nations that foolishly pile up their debt get a Waterloo ending & USA appears charging in that direction as this year its interest payments on a $35 trillion debt will meet its gross national product. Anyone awake at the switch?

Gerald Seib’s WSJ op ed, “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?” painted an alarming picture: “America is cruising into an uncharted sea of federal debt, with a public seemingly untroubled by the stark numbers & a government seemingly incapable of turning them around. In the presidential race, there’s not much partisan difference or advantage on the subject. Donald Trump and President Biden [along with VP Harris] have overseen similar additions to the nation’s accumulated debt – in the range of $7 trillion in each case – during their terms. The national response to both has been, by & large, to look the other way … Over the centuries & across the globe, nations & empires that blithely piled up debt have, sooner or later, met unhappy ends.”

Think Hapsburg Spain & Bourbon France, then, the Ottoman & British Empires. Then, Seib urges, consider the CBO forecasting the federal government will spend $892 billion during the current fiscal year for simply the interest payments on the accumulated national debt (that was then “only” $28 trillion). Concluded Seib, that “interest payments now surpass the amount spent on defense & nearly match spending on Medicare.” Amazingly, the US had a small surplus in the 1990s and just 12 years ago the government’s total debt was about 70% of GDP. But, all that’s chump change now as the service charges on Uncle Sam’s debt will meet or exceed GDP … and is expected to reach a record 106% of GDP by 2028. It’s outrageous of course. You’d think somebody other than Mr. Seib would be outraged. Yet, all we get is a bad rendition of Paul Simon’s “Sound of Silence.”

Davd Soul