$28 Trillion - take a moment to reflect on this number - is the current total of the US National Debt. As of June 17th it is precisely $28,311,074,615,442.85. We titled this blog post "28 Trillion reasons to be vigilant" because this number is not going down, has not gone down in the last 15 years and is unlikely to go down. So, what does this mean for the USA and for you?
1.The cost of servicing the national debt as a percentage of US revenue is going up.
2.If interest rates rise significantly, even as high as 3-4%, how sustainable is servicing the national debt? The Fed has a significant incentive - 28 trillion incentives - to keep interest rates as close to zero for as long as possible without going into negative yield territory. This would very likely have been the case had COVID never happened. COVID however has provided the US a perfect storm to do keep interest rates at all time lows and inject $6 trillion and counting into the economy. This serves several national purposes: It provides massive liquidity to withstand the shock of COVID, it devalues the US dollar by doing so, which in turn dilutes the national debt value, it keeps interest payments on the national debt as low as possible and it allows for the most optimum conditions for the economy to return to pre-COVID employment numbers.
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