With the national debt at $38 trillion and rising, when does Trump decide that default is an option?

[PeaceWave]

DOGE didn't make any appreciable dent on the national debt. Nor did firing approximately 300,000 federal workers. Neither seized Venezuelan oil fields nor stolen Greenlandic rare earth metal deposits will generate significant revenue any time in the near future. Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of all U.S. national debt is held by foreign entities. For a man with no scruples, no diplomatic skills and no real business sense - one well acquainted with personal and corporate refusal to pay financial obligations - how could defaulting on somewhere between $10 and $13 trillion of foreign held U.S. debt appear as anything other than a magic elixir to cure what ails the rising U.S. national debt? We've said it before...He would never do that. And, then he attempted an insurrection. He would never do that...And then he invaded a foreign country and claimed to be its new ruler. He would never do that. Yes, he would. With this man, anything is possible.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougmelville/2026/01/04/with-the-us-debt-a-staggering-38-trillion-dollars-who-exactly-do-we-owe/

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

[chouchou]

1. Maybe the President should have bought and managed a Casino?

and then...ah...ah...never mind....

[Fozzledick]

2. How long before the international bond markets realize that "the full faith and credit of the U.S." no longer exists

and has been replaced with Donald Trump's insanity of the day?

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Now, that would cause a really bad day on the stock market

Or a few years, rather.

[marble falls]

4. Back when a million dollars was actually worth close to a million dollars, my uncle told me if you owed the bank ...

... a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owned you. If you owed the bank one million dollars, you owned the bank.

In the 90s when TACO was going to bring down his bank, the Clinton administration guaranteed that the Fed would cover another billion dollars in loans and save the bank and TACO. This was around the time that he tried to sue Merv Griffin about a resort trade they'd made and TACO lost money.

[rampartd]

5. as soon as he can blame a dem

or as soon as he sees a way to personally profit.

no reasonable person thinks the debt will ever be paid. that is not what it is for.