The US debt is something like 11trillion (or is it 30 trillion?). There are many resources showing the national debt of each country in the world, but if you look for national credit, a quick Google tells me nothing about nations and just asks me how much credit i would like…
You might imagine that if America has a national debt of ‘x’, there should be ‘x’ amount of credit out there amongst other countries, but all the countries seem to just have more debt. So who is the creditor? It appears that looking at it as nations vs nations instead of each nation vs its own central bank is where we make a severe error.
So what is a national debt and who do those nations owe money to? Its own people mostly. But does that mean anything? Can we continue to spin up ever higher numbers to keep the economy alight forever? I don’t see why not. The only caveat I can see is that eventually, the promise that the debt will be repaid is not believed. But to say you have no trust that your investment can be repaid is to undermine the entire economic system. Capitalism only works until the players admit that the wealth they already have is worthless, which nobody will do, as it makes them 100% less wealthy. It is all built on promises, though it is as real as your rent bill.