National Debt

Not usually. Private debt is much more indicative of crisis.

tldr no, not for most relevant countries.
Doubly, Triply, Quadruply, Infinitely no for the USA because of the dollar's hegemony.

it's a big deal for african countries that were ploughed with debt denominated in USD (i.e. so they can't print money to make it go away) in the 70s and forced into structural adjustment programs to pay it back, and for Greece (similar reasons with the Euro.)

Furthermore if you want debt-buggery it's worth pointing out that national debt fell as a % GDP since WW2 to the 1970s in most western countries, despite persistent budget deficits, because growth was much higher and interest rates held low. (Pejoratively, the latter is referred to as "Financial repression", but tbqh it's a 10/10 policy.)

Sometimes borrowing costs are outright negative because taking a small loss thanks to inflation outpacing interest rates beats holding the cash. That's not theft, that's a "mutually beneficial transaction"
(Plus, there's literally nothing wrong with stealing from Porky, but that's neither here or there. If the workers get the means of production for free you expect me to cry..?)

It's a possibility that it could be a problem. But if it does become a problem, it probably means an existential crisis of capitalism.

Something, something Jewish bankers.

The right wants a large deficit so that the leisure class can purchase public assets when the austerity comes. (probably in 2034 crisis)

That said, debt is not harmful in itself, England had a 250% debt to gdp ratio after the war and came out just fine, japan has had 200% for a while now and it's not terrible except the old people are setting themselves on fire because of pension cuts

This is true though, the quantity theory of money is incorrect, Marx literally debunked it in one sentence. re-read capital

Read Steve Keen faggots. Public debt doesn't really matter, private debt does. It was excessive private debt caused by government trying to run a surplus that caused the financial crash. The post-crash explosion of government debt is a symptom of the crisis not the cause

forbes.com/sites/stevekeen/2015/01/14/beware-of-politicians-bearing-household-analogies-3/#6b8e6452eb12

Also:

youtube.com/watch?v=LxJW7hl8oqM

Every single country has debt. It's just an excuse to cut programs that help the people. Notice how they never consider cutting the military as debt relief.

A state that issues its own currency always must collect the currency it itself issues before it can spend it. It's just common sense. Suppose Bob prints his own sort-of currency, since he helps kids with homework, so he issues vouchers for that named "Bob Hours". It stands to reason that Bob, if he is an honest man, if he isn't a Functional Finance Fractional Banking Jew, that is if Bob follows reasonable accounting, then he must first acquire any "Bob Hour" he wants to spend before spending it. This is one fundamental pillar of sound economics, and there are two fundamental pillars.

The other fundamental pillar of sound economics is that the currency, to be valuable, must be itself made of valuable material. Gold money is sound money, but it isn't perfect. The economy consists of more things than gold, and optimal money would be a perfect mirror image of the economy. So, take a look around you. What exists in a prosperous economy? There is gold, there is silver, tin foil, there are fast cars and smart doctors. So, optimal money should be a fusion of these things. Half the economy should be set up to mirror the other in its output, then you just put all those things in a big super-hot oven and fuse them together!

Praise Ron Paul & death to the Keynesian infidel.

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I've read so many neoclassicals that I can't tell if this is real or satire

even though the gold standard is a meme i encourage goldbuggery in the hopes we can bring back Breton Woods and get another 20 good years out of it before it implodes again. (the key element of BR was currency pegging, not gold, but hopefully through osmosis… though keynes' bancor would've been pegged to gold too for some reason i'm not quite sure why shut up don't question keynes.)

Only if your debts are denominated in your currency. And if the creditors have smaller armies than you.

MMT only works for Empires.

Greece is more miltarily capable than Germany. They should have told Hans to go fuck himself.

It matters because you have to pay the imaginary money debt with "real" money you worked for.

fucking with germany means fucking with all of NATO

So does fucking with Greece though.

Greece is in NATO too. Germany would have to use aggression to get its money back if Greece had the backbone to cash in it's CDS's.

Really making me think here.

So the perfidious Anglo-American monster is going to take greece's side in this scenario? I doubt it.

telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9438437/Iran-sentences-four-to-death-for-bank-fraud.html

Most likely, what would happen is this: Greece exits the Eurozone, and is possibly forced out of the EU. Economic sanctions are put on them, and the US acquiesce. At that point, Greece is stuck, until the EU as a whole falls apart and individual countries open their markets again.

Or, they turn to Russia or China or X, but then the good folks in Langley will engineer a coup.

Pretty sure Obama would have done what he did in Ukraine - talk tough then walk away, and his British poodle would have followed him.

Austerity, like laws or taxes, is for the poor, silly. There's always money for the political class, wars, and Israel - and especially for politicians advocating wars for Israel.

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there is (probably) no capitalism without imperialism.
going full bancor would give developing nations a much stronger voice than the current mess. (and would be my preferred option if capitalism suddenly discovered rationality, BW i more freely admit is shit that's designed to collapse, but 20 years would at least see out my adult life without suicide.)

Going back to the gold standard wouldn't work now and it's an outmoded idea anyway. Something like Bancor is neccessary though, the whole global economy needs proper organisation so it's at least somewhat fair.
But that's "globalism".

Truthfully I'd view bancor through a rather nationalist lens, since it empowers (and encourages) national governments to maintain trade balances instead of letting muharket forces decide where to allocate resources. One small piece of power for globalisation, one giant leap for national development.

Shame we'll probably go down the "we can pick our own damn vegetables" route of nationalism-through-suffering. (i.e. take the minimum wage out of the USA so that american workers are paid competitively with illegal immigrants, because at least then there are more white faces in our arbitrary border zone.)

Wrong. You don't understand a thing about MMT.

When you're issuing bonds in your own currency you can print your own money to pay it back.

If an other country holds those bonds it will only accept currency that will be able to buy products on your market of consummate value to the ones they exported to you for which you incurred the debt.

Don't ignore international trade.

STOP. You don't get it. is correct. It is not up to that other country to determine anything about the value of those bonds.

Ah yes, the Zimbabwe and Venezuelean method. Very effective.

AMERICANS PAY DEBTS NOW OR I REPORT YOU :-DDDD

seriously though, how does MMT explain hyperinflation?
I want the gold standard back to measure the FRoP accurately.

If you have less than a 420 Imperialist points your currency flops? how does it work.

It is, they have an interest in driving up the purchasing power of what they hold. You are thinking in shoulds and rights and other spooks, while international relations are entirely about force. If I hold bond in your currency and you decide to inflate away the value of that currency and thus my bonds, I might just decide to put you under sanctions, or even send the marines in to extract at gunpoint the value that I perceive you are so stealing from me.

Again, you only have as much power with and over your own currency as you have power tout court. MMT is a great theory if you are a Great Power, not indebted to another Greater Power.

Vzla tried pegging their currency to the dollar which is haram in MMT. Besides, hyperinflation is not actually an argument against the claim that you don't run out of your own currency.

When you issue too much, you of course have hyperinflation. What MMT denies is that a gap between spending and taxation that is covered just by putting more currency into circulation brings with it inflation exactly equal to that disparity. AFAIK MMT also denies that incuring a huge debt in your own currency must mean huge interest payments.

Are you okay?

Hence the "I perceive" preceding it, you blockhead.

>I'm not spooked by spooky_concept if I say that I perceive spooky_concept

It isn't spooked though. That people have this or that perception is a reality you have to consider, especially when they have the power to enforce their perception on you. Max himself was always careful to note this point - hence his frequent reference to (the limits to) the power of the unique one.

If a bondholder feels like he is being jacked, and he has a far bigger navy than you do, no amount of shouting "spooked!" will save you.

We are already living in a multi-polar world. US' absolute dominance is in decline.

Foreign debt is irrelevant for powerful nations, debt owed in social services is a huge problem because printing of cash to fulfill those debts can create massive inflation which makes the monies received in social services nearly useless. So you have a situation where the government either defaults on the debt and doesn't pay up on social services, an act of political suicide that creates mass unrest and a shock to the economy, or printing tremendous amounts of cash that it doesn't have or already wasted and pumping it back into the economy tanking the purchasing power of most working households and creating long term unrest and unsustainable economic conditions for most people similar to the biggest cities in China today.

And if you had that power, why would you need muh bonds justification? Bonus question: Can you give any historical example for a US prez saying something to the effect of
?

The entire question of whether sovereign debt matters aside protip: it doesn't, there's another more specific problem with the way it's often framed.

Debt is often described relative to GDP, in spite of the fact that GDP is (unlike debt) a annual flow, more like deficits, or interest payments. A fairer comparison to debt, would be wealth, as both are persistent.

For instance, in the case of the US, federal debt in 2014 was $17.7T, a pittance compared to gross wealth of >$269.6T, and even including all private and public debt, net wealth was still >$123.8T. Similarly, while GDP was only 17.3T, it utterly dwarfed the federal deficit of $0.48T, not to mention the federal interest payments of just $0.22T:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States

This. US T-Bills already have "negative real interest rates" relative to inflation, while many European treasury bonds are already "negative absolute interest" (worse than cash), and "investors" are still buying them up as fast as they're printed, and demand has no end in sight. "Capitalists" are so desperate to avoid investing any money in the real economy, they'd rather burn it in the fires of inflation than buy capital improvements that would help the proles:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate#Negative_interest_rates

In fact, this unwillingness by hoarding rentiers to fulfill their role as legitimate capitalists is directly to blame for the increase in government debts:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances

Failing to sell as much sovereign debt as possible at these negative interest rates is passing up literally free money from porky.