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Our debt is floated on the open market. We cannot force people, companies, and central banks of other countries to buy it. They place bids at their pleasure, at a price they find acceptable according to their own criteria.

Socialists, being totally clueless as to how the free market works, think they can put more and more restrictive conditions of these debt instruments. As with almost all socialist-originated good intentions, all that will happen is that it reduces the value of what is offered. In the case of debt, it drives down the price which raises the rate of interest we must pay.

The Great Depression was caused by several things, most of which were caused by government policy run amok. One of them was monetary policy, which is not too much of a question today. The other was the sudden and substantial increase in tariffs of imported goods, a tax that had the effect of bringing world trade to a near-halt.

If anyone in Congress even starts to hint that we are going to impose conditions on our debt instruments that are being purchased by foreign governments and banks, they will substantially reduce their purchases. This will have the almost-instant effect of a drastic increase in domestic interest rates and a drastic decline in the value of stocks. Also in the drastic column will come a drastic increase in the amount of the federal budget that must go to paying the interest on the debt we perpetually roll over rather than pay off. And we can kiss the tax receipts from capital gains goodbye.

So, if we want to experiment on how to cause another halt to world trade, we can experiment with ways to make our debt so unattractive that the buyer goes elsewhere, or sits on his money.