How much in debt are you.

[Toddsterpatriot]

That isn't an asset.

If the money we owe SS recipients is a liability, those SS payments are an asset.

 

[Mexicano]

I don't know what currency the Saudis accepted for oil. You may be right. But I don't see what difference it would make. Euros can be converted into dollars. The yen can be converted into dollars, etc. So they could use any currency to buy U.S. goods and services. But they aren't only buying U.S. goods and services. They are buying our ass. Taking legal ownership of American property. As for a fiat currency, look up Mefo bills. Hitler used them to take a ruined German economy and turn it into the greatest economy in the world.

That was the petrodollar agreement, indeed they could trade in other currency, but that was not the deal made by the Saudis.

"In 1973, the petrodollar system was created through a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia. The countries agreed to price and trade oil in US dollars. With oil standardized in terms of dollars, any country that purchased oil from Saudi Arabia would have to use dollars. This led many other oil-producing countries to also standardize oil prices in US dollars – and the petrodollar system was born. !

What is the petrodollar?

Will the petrodollar system come to an end? Tony covers all the main concepts in this article, including the benefits and drawbacks of petro currency.

www.tonyrobbins.com

 

[Mexicano]

I don't see what you said has to do with what you quoted me as saying. What Americans owe is just too high to pay off. And not only are we not paying it off, we are going in the opposite direction with all of our trade deficits. As for inflation, do what Nixon did. Put a wage and price freeze into place.

It means you can't pay it off. Where do you get the money from ?
But more importantly : there is no need to. The Fed holds most of the US treasury bonds. It is a very common operation for the Fed to buy back the bonds it issued.

Who Owns the US National Debt?

The majority of the U.S. national debt is owned by Social Security, the Federal Reserve, and foreign investors. Learn how that impacts the economy and you.

www.thebalancemoney.com

The Fed purchased Treasurys from its member banks, using credit that it created out of thin air. It had the same effect as printing money. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed helped the government avoid the high-interest-rate penalty it would incur for excessive debt.

The Fed can issue creadit out of thin air, it doesn't need borrowers.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

It means you can't pay it off. Where do you get the money from ?
But more importantly : there is no need to. The Fed holds most of the US treasury bonds. It is a very common operation for the Fed to buy back the bonds it issued.

Who Owns the US National Debt?

The majority of the U.S. national debt is owned by Social Security, the Federal Reserve, and foreign investors. Learn how that impacts the economy and you.

www.thebalancemoney.com

The Fed purchased Treasurys from its member banks, using credit that it created out of thin air. It had the same effect as printing money. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed helped the government avoid the high-interest-rate penalty it would incur for excessive debt.

The Fed can issue creadit out of thin air, it doesn't need borrowers.

The Fed holds most of the US treasury bonds.

The Fed owns $4.7 trillion, out of $34.1 trillion.
Less than 14%.

 

[brainsee]

Only if I choose to allow the government to loot me.

Well I know how capitalism works. Even if you don't. If you have something to loot, chances are you gained it by looting others. Unless you are some sort of aristocratic fuck, you should be willing to take what you dish out.

 

[brainsee]

It means you can't pay it off. Where do you get the money from ?
But more importantly : there is no need to. The Fed holds most of the US treasury bonds. It is a very common operation for the Fed to buy back the bonds it issued.

Who Owns the US National Debt?

The majority of the U.S. national debt is owned by Social Security, the Federal Reserve, and foreign investors. Learn how that impacts the economy and you.

www.thebalancemoney.com

The Fed purchased Treasurys from its member banks, using credit that it created out of thin air. It had the same effect as printing money. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed helped the government avoid the high-interest-rate penalty it would incur for excessive debt.

The Fed can issue creadit out of thin air, it doesn't need borrowers.

Nothing of what you said answers the point I made. Which is that between the national debt and unpaid obligations, the number is too high to EVER expect Americans to be able to pay off. But let's just simplify things to just speaking of the national debt. Which is around 34 trillion dollars. That comes out to $101,492 dollars for every person in the U.S. But if you want to narrow that down to the 128 million working age adults in the U.S., that comes out to $265,625 dollars. Even that is way to high to ever expect Americans to pay off. As things are now, around 78% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck. That means no room for paying off such a large number.

 

[brainsee]

If the money we owe SS recipients is a liability, those SS payments are an asset.

An asset is something tangible. SS payments aren't.

 

[brainsee]

That was the petrodollar agreement, indeed they could trade in other currency, but that was not the deal made by the Saudis.

"In 1973, the petrodollar system was created through a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia. The countries agreed to price and trade oil in US dollars. With oil standardized in terms of dollars, any country that purchased oil from Saudi Arabia would have to use dollars. This led many other oil-producing countries to also standardize oil prices in US dollars – and the petrodollar system was born. !

What is the petrodollar?

Will the petrodollar system come to an end? Tony covers all the main concepts in this article, including the benefits and drawbacks of petro currency.

www.tonyrobbins.com

That is all meaningless. Any currency from any country can be converted into dollars. Then whatever country could use those dollars to buy oil from the Saudis with.

 

[westwall]

Well I know how capitalism works. Even if you don't. If you have something to loot, chances are you gained it by looting others. Unless you are some sort of aristocratic fuck, you should be willing to take what you dish out.

No, clearly you DON'T know how capitalism works. The only system that loots its citizenry is socialism. That's why socialist countries are so bad when it comes to their economies.

 

[brainsee]

No, clearly you DON'T know how capitalism works. The only system that loots its citizenry is socialism. That's why socialist countries are so bad when it comes to their economies.

The National Socialist under Hitler was a socialist country. And they created the greatest economy in the world at the time. I think you may be speaking of communism.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

An asset is something tangible. SS payments aren't.

Is a liability something tangible?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

That is all meaningless. Any currency from any country can be converted into dollars. Then whatever country could use those dollars to buy oil from the Saudis with.

Any currency from any country can be converted into dollars.

How many North Korean won to the dollar? What's the current bid/ask?

 

[Toro]

$0

 

[westwall]

The National Socialist under Hitler was a socialist country. And they created the greatest economy in the world at the time. I think you may be speaking of communism.

No, they didn't. We produced more war material in a year, than Germany did in 6. In the time that Germany made 18,000 tanks, we made 86,000. While Germany was able to make 348,000 trucks during the war, we made over 2,000,000.

You have no clue how terrible the economic situation was for the German population.

 

[Mexicano]

That is all meaningless. Any currency from any country can be converted into dollars. Then whatever country could use those dollars to buy oil from the Saudis with.

Commercial agreements are not meaningless. But it all boils down to monetary and resource flows.
At that time US was the main trading partner of Saudis and Iraq ( the US bought most of the oil and the US was the larger exporter of goods and services). So it made perfect sense to trade in dollars.
But times have changed. The US is no longer the main trading partner of the Saudis , it is not even the main trading partner of half of the world, so keeping the deal doesn't make sense any longer.

Regarding trading, yes you can buy any currency , but there is a spread between the sell and buy prices of currencies and the higher the demand the larger that spread gets. Why loose a 5% or 10% on all your purchases? That doesn't make sense.

 

[Mexicano]

Nothing of what you said answers the point I made. Which is that between the national debt and unpaid obligations, the number is too high to EVER expect Americans to be able to pay off. But let's just simplify things to just speaking of the national debt. Which is around 34 trillion dollars. That comes out to $101,492 dollars for every person in the U.S. But if you want to narrow that down to the 128 million working age adults in the U.S., that comes out to $265,625 dollars. Even that is way to high to ever expect Americans to pay off. As things are now, around 78% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck. That means no room for paying off such a large number.

The Fed can pay the debt if it considers it an absolute necessity. But such action is not without consequences.
It all boils down to the behavior of the former debt-holders. They could use it to buy real-estate creating a housing bubble in the US.
They could dump the dollar to invest somewhere more profitable or change it for gold ( creating a gold bubble and the collapse of the dollar).
You don't seem to understand the nature of fiat money: it is simply a journal entry in the accounting books of financial institutions.

 

[Dagosa]

I was talking to my brother today. Who is a real Trumptard. We were talking about the national debt. He seemed to think that Trump could fix it. But we owe so much, it is impossible. Our trade deficit is around 34 trillion dollars. But the U.S. also has around another 200 trillion in unfunded obligations. To me, I don't see much difference between a debt and an obligation. So you may as well say that the U.S. is around 234 trillion in debt. There are around 335 million people in the U.S. That means that each person in the U.S. is in debt for around $698,000! Another problem with that is that there are only around 128 million working age adults in the U.S. Which would make paying off such an impossible figure even more impossible.

Also, there are varying estimates as to what our yearly trade imbalance is with China alone. I have seen estimates that ranged from 257 billion to about 420 billion. So each year we go even deeper into debt by that much just from "trade" with China. Which of course makes paying off such an impossible debt even more unlikely.

As you can guess from what I said earlier, I am definitely not a Trump supporter. But Biden's solution to this problem seems to be to let as many lowlife invaders from south of the border into the U.S. as he can. Maybe what we need is an amoral, psychopathic, would be dictator with delusions of grandeur as president. It seems to me that we couldn't do much worse.

The debt is the sum total of the previous president‘s deficits plus compound interest. Every president inherits debt form the previous presidents. All they can do is reduce the deficit. Every democrat has reduced the deficit during his time in office, ever repugnant has raised it. The debt will always grow until we balance the budget and begin paying down the debt. Republicans NEVER reduce their deficits. Democrats do.

 

[Dagosa]

The Fed can pay the debt if it considers it an absolute necessity.

Thinking does nothing….It’s impossible to balance the budget and pay down the debt until every previous and subsequent admin budget begins reducing their deficits. You can’t go from a trillion dollar deficit in one year to a balanced budget. And NEITHER can you have massive tax cuts and reduce the yearly deficits.

 

[Mexicano]

Thinking does nothing….It’s impossible to balance the budget and pay down the debt until every previous and subsequent admin budget begins reducing their deficits. You can’t go from a trillion dollar deficit in one year to a balanced budget. And NEITHER can you have massive tax cuts and reduce the yearly deficits.

The problem is not the deficit, the problem is that it is all going to keep up the financial system and all the financial bubbles.
That said, the Fed can do exactly what it has done other times, it can buy back the bonds.
There you go, problem solved.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Every democrat has reduced the deficit during his time in office

Cool story.
How much did Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ and Carter reduce the deficit?