Headline -

 

"US debt soars to $28 trillion"

 

Considering how long it took to get there (a number of years), I hardly call that soaring.

 

The national debt is not substantially past the knee of the exponential yet - which is the only time when it can actually start soaring (but it soon will!).

 

The bigger problem is the sheer size of the debt in the meantime - and the fact that it IS growing faster and faster.

 

That was even before the stimulus a year ago - all of which was borrowed money.

 

That added more than $2 trillion to the national debt - in just a couple of months.

 

That accelerated the national debt exponential.

 

Biden's $1.9 trillion plan, nearly as large, will do the same (that is also all borrowed money).

 

In other words, the more of this they do, the faster we hit national bankruptcy.

 

Take a look at how fast the national debt is compounding on itself in the meantime now - usdebtclock.org , the upper left-hand corner.

 

And more huge annual deficits are projected as far as the eye can see -

 

in other words, the national debt compounding will not only not slow down, the country is absolutely guaranteeing that it is going to continue to speed up indefinitely into the future!

 

This virtually guarantees that the national debt will go exponential - even if it is not past the knee of the exponential yet.

 

By the way - profligate spending is typical of a late-stage democracy. 

 

The United States effectively became a democracy with the ratification of constitutional amendment #17 in 1913 (more than 100 years ago).

 

(It is long-since no longer a Republic, as some conservative Republicans like to assert.)

 

Constitutional amendment #16, also of 1913, provided the funding for a late-stage democracy to develop (it made the income tax legal).

 

(The income tax had been unconstitutional before.)

 

(And the Fed was authorized later the same year, 1913 - it all ties together.)

 

One other note -

 

No, the recently drastically lower interest rates won't help - federal debt instruments, in other words, Treasuries, don't get paid off early.  

They go to the currently prevailing interest rate when they mature and get rolled over (into new ones).

The majority of Treasuries currently outstanding are multi-year, not multi-month. 

 
Some of them even go out decades.  

Given how quickly the national debt is going up in the meantime, compounding on itself, there is simply no way the system is going to be able to get ahead of that anymore and start reversing things. 

The national debt WILL go exponential.  

The only question is will things hold up long enough for the national debt to go exponential on its own or will the economy go down first (which is what I have thought all along is going to happen and I still think that), with the result that tax collections go way down and expenses go way up, resulting in huge annual deficits, which will speed up the national debt exponential, making it happen sooner, rather than later.  

See my book for the full story, the full explanation, and background information (why we are at where we are at and why it is impossible to get out of this situation anymore, and why it was never really possible to get out of it in the first place, really all along already; the situation has really been sent in stone as an eventual outcome for a long time already).

 

And now interest rates are even going back up again - they are nowhere near their lows anymore!