2008 was maybe the last moment when Washington could've credibly pivoted and attempted to tackle the debt problem with massive, uncomfortable structural changes.
Instead, they chose to kick the can down the road, the use every conceivable tool to "cheat" the global financial system and preserve Washington's hegemony over it.
Since 2008, the national debt has gone from $10T to $30T.
The only way out at this point is a total collapse of the foreign US debt markets and a hard pivot away from USD as global reserve currency. The rest of the planet is not going to keep getting ripped off like this. Even if Washington tries to start paying down its debt, it's gonna take way too long at this point. The jig is up.
There is nothing to replace it. The reason the US dollar is the global reserve currency now is that the US is the only nation who is exporting enough currency to allow any two arbitrary counterparties anywhere in the world to get their hands on a common currency. And the only way the US can export that much currency is to run a persistent and structural trade deficit financed by debt. No one else has a big enough economy to throw off that much currency other than maybe China and the EU and neither of those want to dislocate their main economic engines by becoming huge net importers.
Instead, they chose to kick the can down the road, the use every conceivable tool to "cheat" the global financial system and preserve Washington's hegemony over it.
Since 2008, the national debt has gone from $10T to $30T.
The only way out at this point is a total collapse of the foreign US debt markets and a hard pivot away from USD as global reserve currency. The rest of the planet is not going to keep getting ripped off like this. Even if Washington tries to start paying down its debt, it's gonna take way too long at this point. The jig is up.