No, Alan Greenspan is correct. We get to pay debts in dollars we print. So we won’t default. But, doing so recklessly would create massive problems and could potentially wreck our economy for decades. But since we sell bonds with varying degrees of time to maturity, we could print and buy the debt back over time, even sell some as we buy more with a plan to pay it down in shorter or longer time periods. Doing so would probably be inflationary or hyper inflationary depending how fast it was done. But if we didn’t sell more bonds - or at least kept buying back more than we sold - those dollars would ultimately work their way into capital investments. If we had sincere leaders who know what the hell they were doing (or weren’t doing the bidding of well heeled industries) there could be a way to ease out of it. But first, we need to get our budget under control.
No, Alan Greenspan is correct. We get to pay debts in dollars we print.
But first, we need to get our budget under control.