Most people do not realize money is an illusion. That is to say, there is no inherent value in, for example, gold coins. The fiction of money is simply a way to extend borrowings and lendings into time, backed by the current laws or control of the society.
A gold coin for example, does not guarantee anything more than any other rock. Were civilization to fall completely, any better-armed thug could take it away. Were the new King’s tax gatherers to show up, they could legally take it and anything else. If food or water was scarce, nobody would trade. The only value in a gold coin resides in the stability of its society.
As we all learn to our sorrow, most money today has no more existence than electronic numbers connected somewhere in cyberspace. And those numbers can be magiced with little effort _ “presto! you’re a million dollars richer! _ we slipped a single digit into the correct column in your account”. Or poorer, of course.
Such personal debt is in a way imaginary, but at least that vague fog will probably be enforced by law. But “national debt” is basically meaningless. It is a promise to pay something in the future. What, or how, or forced by whom is an open fantasy.
Economists, secure in their delusions of mathematical models, claim it will be enforced when no one borrows our bonds anymore. Think a minute about all the countries of the past _ Weimar Germany, Imperial Russia, Peron’s Argentina _ and giggle.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 