Interest payments on the national debt now exceed $1 trillion annually — roughly 14% of all federal spending. And it is about to get way worse
Hi John,
Our speaker for this Thursday, Jim Millstein, wrote to us today about the critical warning he plans to deliver to our community.
The U.S. government is now spending $2 trillion more each year than it takes in, but what makes that especially dangerous is how quickly interest costs are piling up.
Interest payments on the national debt now exceed $1 trillion annually—roughly 14% of all federal spending. And it is about to get way worse. With $8 trillion in existing debt coming due in the next year, we will be refinancing large chunks of that debt at today's higher rates.
This leads to what Jim calls the debt spiral: rising interest costs fuel bigger deficits, which fuel more debt, which drives interest costs even higher. Like the dreaded death spiral in aviation, it is hard to pull out of this dive once it begins.
Jim will explain this more fully tomorrow (Thursday, May 29) at 4:00 PM ET when he speaks to us via Zoom.
When Jim sounds the alarm, we had better listen. He is the former Chief Restructuring Officer at the U.S. Treasury and one of the foremost experts on sovereign debt and financial risk. He helped steer AIG through one of the most complex restructurings in American history.
His bottom line is simple: if we do not act soon to get our fiscal house in order, we will reach a point where the math no longer works. We cannot afford to let that happen, quite literally.
