so, if every country has debts, please tell me who do they owe it? is there, in fact, any hope of ever becoming debt free? is it even desirable (for a nation)?

also, have you ever heard of money creation?

Yeah. That's a curious thing. But it also sets up a domino thing. A owes B who owes C who owes, etc. So when C defaults, B can't pay interest so B defaults, which causes A to default, etc.

Desirable. Very. But I've seen many smart people say no, there is now no way to avoid a world monetary crisis.

Yes. That's the problem.

Here's a graph that vividly illustrates Zimbabwe's experience with money creation in 2008. This is where Venezuela seems to be headed soon. And the EU and US may not be all that many months behind.

http://kenjackson.us/img/zwd-per-usd.jpg
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Ugh. I can't seem to make the image directly visible. The forum is broken. Sorry.

In answer to your first question, probably themselves, so i take your point there (I was just making the point that it's a never ending cycle, so to speak - if that makes sense).

For your second question, in all likelihood, nope!

For your third question, certainly not for your country and probably the same for most others (including mine).

Yes I have heard of "money creation" (and agree with ya).

EDIT: I do honesty agree with sundialsvcs's point, I wasn't just saying that to be funny.

I suspect that Trump was talking about military involvement more than money, anyways.

Isn't it just to whomever buys the bonds they issue? (was this a trick question? I don't get it)

The required spending cuts and/or tax increases to get there are not desirable.

Will tax increases generate more revenue? Congresses during the Kennedy and Reagan administrations increased tax revenues by cutting taxes. Trump wants this Congress to do the same.

There is some optimal tax rate which will generate the greatest total tax revenue. I don't understand why liberals hate to face it, but it's obvious if you just think about it logically. The question is whether the current tax rate is above the optimal rate or not. I think it is. Apparently Trump agrees.

Also, liberals seem to see taxes as punitive. They love to "tax the rich" to throw it down to them regardless of the harm it does to employees of the "rich".

In other words themselves, and you might be onto something about it being a "trick question".

Folks on the right like to believe that cutting taxes will increase revenue. Similarly, folks on the left like to believe that increasing spending (or "investment") will increase revenue. Everyone likes to take credit when the economy goes up, and blame someone else when it goes down. The economy is complicated, and it's impossible to run properly controlled experiments, so it's hard to say what will happen.

Correlation is not causation.

If you think about a simplified model (which is all any of us can do), yes.


Why do you "themselves"? Anyone can buy bonds. Even you!

Who's selling those bonds in the first place? Themselves!

The Hidden Secrets of Money series of videos touch on some of the topics discussed in this thread.
They're educational and quite fascinating.

money creation happens everywhere, all the time.

most nations just manage to keep it within limits, more or less.

in a way it also happens in every bank (might be called differently, but effectively the same thing).

credit is an illusion, cash doubly so.

... actually, let's dare to question this thing ...

Is it seriously in any nation's interests (let alone self-interests) to actually set off any chain-of-events that would actually grant "all the human beings on Planet Earth™!" . . .

. . . a Darwin Award?

Bzzzz-z-zz-z-zz-t!!" I don't think so!

"Inevitably (sic) ..." if they get 'sufficiently pissed-off' (according to us) ... they will ... "inevitably (sic)" ... think nothing(!) of ... of ... of ... poisoning all of Planet Earth with wind-born lethal-to-all-life-on-this-planet doses of plutonium?"

"Seriously?!?!?!" Did you say: "inevitably?"

Therefore, I think that is quite imperative to shake ourselves, once and for all(!), from the "Cold War" rhetoric that was very-much foisted upon us all by ... Americans! (Yeah, my country.)

In the "official histories" of World War II, the United States™ still claims primary responsibility for victory on both fronts ... especially driven by its manufacturing infrastructure ... even though a more-objective consideration of history would likely observe that it had a non-pivotal impact on both conflicts: "it was simply too far away!"

The real "10,000-pound elephant in the room" was always the country that was in proximate land contact with both belligerents. It could well be said that both parties truly ended the conflict because they knew that this country would soon come in and finish both of them off ... by land.

Meanwhile, the USA wanted to claim victory, and thereby to secure the inevitability of the "military-industrial complex" that dominates our thinking, and our international policies, even to this day.

World War II came and went, but of course "the spending(!) must never, ever, cease!"

To these ends, they created a straw-man ... and they coaxed a few leaders thereof into being sufficiently-good actors in the "pound a boot-heel against the table" film-clips that the American militarists needed in order to persuade the populace ofthe American Republic that their former ally had become "a faceless evil," and that therefore the children of the American Republic must now "duck and cover " under their desks.

Although no nation on Earth – (least of all, I'm quite sorry to say, America) – is "'holier than' anybody else," at the very least we can re-apprise ourselves of what all of them are actually doing. We can learn the present language of international politics.

And maybe, having learned it, we can in the future begin to change it.