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Comment by scoofy | Hacker News Reader

> So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us.

This is magical thinking. The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them. Unless you think American taxpayers will suddenly be willing to live within our means, it’s a real problem.

The current reserve currency status means that people often use the bonds for reasons other than returns, but we need to not fool ourselves into assuming this paradigm is permanent. Once real inflation gets going, it’s just a coordination problem to change the reserve instrument. After that, the intersection between what the US can feasibly return and what investors require can quickly evaporate.

We are currently on a Japanese trajectory, but that could easily become Argentina.

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> The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them

largest investor will be or already a Fed, and it will continue buying if there is political will.

Again... when the only purchaser becomes the central bank, then you're effectively printing money. Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year. This is already quite high, and is compounded by the knowledge that outstanding liabilities of the nation basically dwarf the current debt.

If that is the plan, then hyper-inflation is not only on the table, it starts to become probable. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a problem. There isn't a free lunch here. Yes, inflating the debt away is an option... to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.

> Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year.

sure, there are plenty of countries in the world who just print money without all these debt ritual.

> to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.

this niche (government prints money to fund its expenses) is not part of any market, but just policy supported by monopoly on violence.

My point is the vast majority of citizens don’t actually want to become poorer over time with zero incentive to save or invest.

Your point is very superficial. People in power know that majority of citizens don't want to become poorer, so they created sophisticated infrastructure of political parties, financial transactions, methods of policing, which extracts wealth from citizens, but citizens don't know how exactly and what to do about this. Debt and all fed thing is one of components.

If you’re suggesting that the electorate is not generally in control of fiscal policy then it’s safe to say this conversation is over. We can agree to disagree on the structure of the American government.

The majority of citizens may not be following all this closely, but they're not stupid. They can feel when they're becoming poorer, and they don't like it. They blame the president when it happens, even if they can't explain exactly why.

But what the Republicans might be able to do is spend like drunken sailors, and have the crisis happen when the Democrats are in power after 2028. People blame the current president, whether or not he had much of a chance to do anything about it.

both parties abuse debt in favor of protecting interests of rich: Biden and Obama added 8T each.

isn't this Op's point? Fed buys, causing inflation, which inflates the debt away, and interest is owed to the Fed, but the fed can just turn and buy more bonds with the surety payments. Inflation also has the added benefit of increasing tax revenue.

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