Once the US Treasuries bubble bursts, the same moment, the bubble in the US Dollar and America will burst too.

We're living in the final stages of the final bubble, mother of all bubbles in the mankind history. So we have house prices in bubble territory, car loans in bubble territory, Wall Street in bubble territory, VCs/startup scene in bubble territory. Enjoy the ride! But you don't want to be there for the bubble burst of the world reserve currency. I'm already on the other side of the pond.

"For individuals, the trick is to be your own devil's advocate: to think through how your favored conclusions might be misguided; to ask yourself how you might be wrong, or how things might turn out differently from what you expect. It helps to try practicing what the psychologist Charles Lord calls 'considering the opposite.' To do this, I often imagine myself in a future in which I have turned out to be wrong in a decision, and then consider what the likeliest path was that led to my failure. And lastly: Seek advice. Other people may have their own misbeliefs, but a discussion can often be sufficient to rid a serious person of his or her most egregious misconceptions."

So, can you do it? Can you think through what could be wrong with your own argument? And what possible lapses or biases could had led you to such (putatively) unwarranted certainty?

Possible? Of course! Probable? Your call.

Inflating the monetary base is actually doing the same, but without the need to raise taxes ex explicite. Everything gets more expensive year to year: tuition, insurance, services, etc. That's your hidden tax - inflation. We are paying off the Chinese by returning them money that's less valuable that the money we borrowed from them.

Some things, like 600% debt to GDP ratio that currently the US has are just facts of life. Can I imagine reality without them? Sure! The media is full of them from CNBC to Bloomberg News. Why you insist on me providing you scenarios? Ask them if they can imagine bubble in Treasuries! They certainly couldn't see one in housing or the .com one even though they both were straight in their faces. They laughed off anyone talking about bubbles then. The same now they lough into faces of Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, Jim Rogers, Kyle Bass, and others when they talk about bubble in the US Treasuries. In other words, you are asking wrong person to do the reality check. I'm the reality check to the mainstream camp blind to the obvious. 600% debt to gdp.

Can FED raise the interest rates to stop all the bubbles in their tracks? Sure they can! They need to be cautious though. Because at interest rates at 7%, the US Government will be spending over 50% of the annual budget just to pay interest on the debt we have. Can we imagine the FED going to raise the rates to 20% as Volcker did in the early 1980s? Sure, but then well over 100% of the state income from taxes would need to be paid on the interest alone! This is how much we owe. Can I imagine reality where this is not true? Sure, but why would I ever do that? Why to imagine world where mistakes aren't happening when they are right in our faces?

I'm not saying we don't have options. I'm just saying that taking into the account the dirty politics, we can't have the President have speech like that, can we?

Another solution: war. In the state of war we don't repay. That's the rule ages old.

So, yes there are plenty of scenarios: from bankruptcy, theory hyperinflation, ending on WW3.

There is no positive outcome from debt to GDP ratio at 600%. Sorry.

One could argue that we will just have "lost decades" as Japanese did. That the process will take forever and we will slowly decline and the rest of the world will follow suite. Might be that it will take 30 years. The thing is that looking at Russia, China, ISIS, I don't think they will just let us decline.

You can proudly proclaim that the bubbles were obvious now that the pops have come to pass, but talk is cheap, and if you're wrong, it's always "just around the corner" until one day, you saw it coming all along. If it takes 30 years for the bubble to pop, then god damn, check out this HN thread from 2014 where you predicted this exact outcome THREE DECADES in advance, but nobody listened!

I'm not dismissing the consequences of running up absurd levels of debt, I just think it's sort of funny that in a thread regarding the failings of human certitude, you felt it necessary to demonstrate your certainty in outcomes regarding, of all things, macroeconomics, perhaps the least reliable science from which to model precise predictions.

That's...not true. I don't know where you're getting your information, but the ratio is about 106%. They're both in the range of $17 trillion.

And the whole point is moot, because Medicare and Medicaid obligations can be easily lowered by legislation. Which is why the actual debt number is the one that matters.

And just logically thinking, really: don't you think that the debtor with debt in USD that prints USD at the same time, doesn't have an incentive to under-report inflation? The situation is akin to you being able (as a debtor) to set APR on your own mortgage.

And then, the mystery of people complaining about raising prices of food, gas, housing, everything, and then believing in the official propaganda of "no inflation" in the past 7 years. Are you kidding me? Is your insurance cost the same as 7 years ago? Is the grocery bill the same? Cars cost the same? Maybe equities propped by inflationary policy have the same price?

I don't care if Nobel Price in Economics Krugman tells me I have no inflation for 7 years when I have been shopping for 7 years, watching equities and bond markets, just to know better. Sure, Keynsians are paid "economists" to peddle the idea of no inflation, they are all paid by Government. What do you expect them to do? Report 5-10% inflation y/y ?

And inflation is often hidden: $50k BMW 5-series is now 4-cylinder. Used to be 6. The can of coke in Germany for 1 euro used to be 330ml. Now it is 250ml. Price stays the same. So on, so forth. Isn't that inflation?

Wait to see space bubble. Space mining will need huge amounts of capital that will be invested in space ships and stations that for many years will give no positive returns.

Still they'll be obviously valuable for the future, so we will have Internet-kind bubble thousands fold.

Well, that's a mostly empty statement, as it's unfalsifiable - even people who think, and see this happening, what can they do? Is there any way to profit from the mispricing of assets, when everything is overvalued? Well, you could short stuff, but that's a huge risk (since the central banks have an incentive to keep the bubble from bursting, so they can ramp the asset prices even higher), and only available to those with existing capital, not the "people". Move to a non-USD based economy? All economies depend on the USD, and if USD crashes, the whole world goes down with it. What are the "people" supposed to do other than to weather the upcoming storm?

This what Keynsians call in this case problem for Chinese I call a huge win. Keynsians will tell you: oh, but now Chinese exports will get prohibitively expensive! And I say: BS! The yuan currency will go up in value up to 6 times. Why to export anywhere when you just got 1 billion new consumers worth 6 times more than before?! Next step: rest of the world starts producing again, including US. China stops being factory of the world as we can't afford their stuff anymore. We need to relearn how to build and assemble it again. Voila, here you have balance back in the system.

The best investment is your own skillset. Actually, the "workers" as you call them might be in better position in this scenario as they usually have better and broader knowledge of fixing every day stuff than let's say accountants or software engineers might have.

Selling treasuries seems to be more for sovereigns that are looking to raise money rather than park it.

Buyers of US treasuries appear to be in the "park" camp.

Did you really move out of the US because of the coming crisis? I'm really curious about this. I understand there will be riots and it will be unstable for a while but how much chaos are you expecting?

Peter claims in his book that no CEO looks beyond 3 months timeframe running their Company anymore. Why? Because market knows better anyway. Why to plan, when market will determine what the market is going to be? Uncertainty.

Medical: we can't control genes right? They determine everything, so why to care, why to plan?

Social: cultural marxism. Pessimistic culture -- everything is wrong because we are capitalist society. As long as it exists we can't be certain of anything.

If you have debt to gdp ratio of 600%, what do you expect? Flourishing economy? Things will go down south. You are like a six year old pissed of that two and two is four every time. Some things are certain. Like 600% debt to gdp aren't pretty. Not positive. Not uncertain. Fucking shit. OK?