Good article, except he got this part wrong: “It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back.”
What that group of people have figured out is if *they* borrow $18 trillion, *somebody else* is going to have to pay it back (and most of that ‘somebody else’ hasn’t figured that out yet).
It’s very possible that no one will pay the loan back. Many loans go bad, US sovereign debt may end up as the largest bad debt in history.
It is also possible we will pay it off with heavily deflated currency, essentially screwing the creditors with our money printing power.