> This debt is only ever re-financed, isn‘t it?

so what? Have they missed an interest payment? Is their economy unproductive and cannot pay the interest?

Having the debt means you are entitled to a portion of the economic output of the machine behind that debt. Why is it a must for the debt to be repayable in one go? Esp. if the debt was not all issued in one go?

each time a particular treasury bond is due in full, the US treasury has been able to repay it. Whether they repay it by issuing new bonds, or increase their taxes and pay it off, makes no difference to the holder of that bond.

In absolute terms, the US is probably competitive as the most indebted entity in history. In relative terms, they are well past the threshold where countries pay back their debts in full. Their past performance isn't really a guide to what happens next, unless they've changed what is being measured the US is a financial basket case [0]. They aren't going to pay back what was lent to them in real terms, the idea is preposterous.

[0] https://www.longtermtrends.net/us-debt-to-gdp/

https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/86397 presents a reasonable argument for why you can't just compare debt-to-GDP between very different systems and expect it to make sense. (The US in particular is, of course, in many ways an outlier.)

Treasury securities are routinely repaid, and by routinely I mean literally weekly.

With new debt, which is what re-financing is.

I guess this comes down to semantics. Paying off an old loan with a new one isn‘t ”paying off your debt“ in my eyes. You are still in debt afterwards.

The total amount of debt will never come down again without hyperinflation. Whether that is good, bad, or doesn‘t matter is up to economists. But that‘s how it is.

Musk, Bezos, and other billionaires have most of their cash in the form of loans taken out against their paper assets. This means they are actually producing more than enough new value to cover the interest on those loans, so essentially the loans they get are free money handed to them by someone who believes they'll pay it back, which those billionaires can then put into more productive or higher-yield enterprises and make even more money with it. When borrowing or refinancing is a good idea, you do it, because you'd be losing potential gains if you didn't. That's essentially the situation with America.

> I guess this comes down to semantics. Paying off an old loan with a new one isn‘t ”paying off your debt“ in my eyes. You are still in debt afterwards.

In the context of meeting obligations to creditors, which is what is being discussed, it absolutely is.

> The total amount of debt will never come down again without hyperinflation.

What has fundamentally changed since the last time it did which was (checks) Q2 2019?

> Whether that is good, bad, or doesn‘t matter is up to economists. But that‘s how it is.

There is very little reason to believe that. In fact, to the extent that the debt and inflation are related, the same acts which drive the debt up drive inflation, not the other way around.

You mean the real value of debt. By the way, it can't be paid off because negative interest rates, which represent the power of the debtor to refuse additional debt, are either ignored or people are trying to make them illegal. Germany has negative interest rates on its public debt and debt is going down.

How does it matter to whoever is holding the treasuries? The claim is that the promise to pay the debt will not be kept.

Again, this comes down to how you define ”pay the debt“. To me, if you pay back your debt, you are dept-free. Re-financing (at the same interest rate) is debt-neutral, if you follow this logic.

> To me, if you pay back your debt, you are dept-free.

Graber's point is primarily about foreign holders of US debt and how this is the American empire extracting tribute from its vassals. Whether America is debt-free or not really relevant.

Capital itself is global and claims no Nation, so why should you and I?