-Money is not linked to gold or silver, and hence has no intrinsic value.
-No matter how badly we eff things up the Euros will always be ten steps ahead of us.
-Too many creditor regimes would face the wrath of their own people (Saudis, ChiComs) if they lost us, their best customer.
Hence everyone has incentive to just keep the crap game floating for a long, long time. They will keep lending us Monopoly money to buy their stuff and we will keep pretending we are gonna pay them back.
Intrinsically I think voters in the West have figured this out.
What if the gov held a T-bill auction, and nobody came?