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Originally Posted by minusonebit
These two graphs tell the story. If this were a company's financial report, would you buy stock in it? Of course not. So why is it any different when its the government?
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Well there are several reasons why it's different when it's the government.
First and most obviously the government owns the printing press whereas a corporation does not.
Secondly the power to levy taxes on the largest economy in the world means that the ability to repay the debt will always be there.
I'm not happy about the deficit or the national debt, however as a percentage of our economy our debt was higher at the end of world war II than it is now, and coincidentally the end of world war II was also the beginning of the largest ever peacetime economic expansion in history.
The amount of money we owed at the end of the war was over 125% of our GDP.
That same $$ amount now is the equivalent of a rounding error in the federal budget.
While I agree that U.S. fiscal policy needs to change, buying U.S. government debt is the safest investment in the world.