$40 Trillion
Our debts aren’t going to just disappear. Absent a conscious effort, we are just waiting for an increasingly likely economic meltdown. The ancient world had a different understanding of the nature of money, which is why debt forgiveness became a standard feature of their cultures. We need to start seeing money and debt the way people saw it back then: As a system to distribute resources that, like any system, can be periodically reset.
- An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Our $40 Trillion Deficit, NYTimes
By Gregg Wall (8-22-2026)
This week was notable for: the U.S. crossing over the $40 trillion in national debt threshold; long term interest rates climbing and 30 year Treasury yields soaring north of 5.30% (a 19 year high); the Treasury intervening in markets with a token effort, swapping out long term debt for short term debt in an effort to calm markets and yields; AI and hyperscaler lending continuing to surge, expecting to climb well into the trillions; Trump’s man-made oil shock and inflation continuing; and crypto, on cue, began rising from the dead.
Treasury Secretary Bessent says America can grow its way out the debt, by which he probably means further US dollar debasement and inflation. When the world is tapped out and you cannot sell more units, one can always arbitrarily jack prices on the constant set of units or even the declining number of units sold to achieve magical growth. But the growth fairy has existed for decades, and nation state debt continues to climb, the oligarchy grows obscenely richer, and the peasantry grows poorer. At the moment, the only thing certain is death, manipulated markets, a burning planet, a soaring Gini coefficient, endless for-profit wars, and catastrophic national debt.
As we reach $40 trillion, it’s instructive to talk about how we got here; the ramifications; and the fallout.
In the beginning, there was Greenspan’s legacy, the FED put, the 2008 market crash, and Ben Bernanke. The 2008 crash was notable not only for the finger pointing that transpired, but the trillions in transactions and bailout money that sloshed around (a congressional audit pegged it at $16 trillion, but the number ultimately climbed as high as $29 trillion), and for the fact that no responsibility and accountability ever transpired. Millions of Americans were laid off and millions lost their homes – the opioid epidemic that started in the late 90s gathered steam. Billions in profits were made off bailout money, with sweetheart lending deals from the banker of last resort. The FED adopted easy money policies, zero bound rates, and QE… monetizing problematic debt instruments, reinflating markets, and expanding the FED balance sheet with eight to nine trillion dollars printed out of thin air. No wonder the badly mauled U.S. dollar is no longer what it used to be.
But the worst part, seemingly few lessons were learned, no serious reforms enacted (Dodd Frank and the subsequent roll back are a joke), technocratic elites, like the FED chair, continued to operate behind closed doors, and the national debt detonated into a supernova (Trump, of course, being responsible for approximately 30% of the national debt). The key lesson: Congress, the two-party system, Wall St, the pathocracy, private equity would learn that they could now get away with just about anything… the sugar daddy of last resort would switch on the printing presses and make it all right: no risk, all reward, privatized profits, tax free bailouts. The only people who paid were the 99%. Ben Bernanke, who would get his Nobel in economics, along with subsequent FED chairs, financed for-profit wars that would continue aimlessly through the decades, and bailouts would become profit centers unto themselves: including Trump’s first term Wall St/COVID bailout, and Peter Thiel’s SVB bailout under Biden. Financialization, private equity, venture capital, greed-first, national debt and the money supply exploded and with-it moral hazard. GFANZ would commodify and monetize planetary collapse. Successive FED chairs adopted the Greenspan put, the idea that Wall St was too big to fail. Only exorbitant privilege could offer such a squandered & wasted gift and deliver such a curse: an Epstein class, a kleptocracy, and what increasingly looks like a banana republic. Deregulation returned with a vengeance, always with the promise of delivering the great panacea, the holy grail: economic growth. And yet, the crisis in America grows.
And the ramifications of greed, debt, exorbitant privilege, and money supply gone wild?
The number of billionaires climbed from 329 in 2007 to 935 in 2025.
The world’s richest man possesses as much wealth as the bottom 45% to 50% of the population.
35% to 40% of Americans work gig;
70% of Americans can’t afford the basics;
90% of Americans put off healthcare, doctors’ visits, and medical procedures because they cannot afford them.
DOGE and Trump slashed and burned services, like SNAP, not because people didn’t need it, but because they could.
Local, state, and federal spending now make up between thirty-five to forty percent of GDP.
America’s real economy has been offshored over the span of decades, and Trump’s tariffs program has done very little to bring the factories back.
Meanwhile, financialization is a money pit, which relies upon greater and greater amounts of private and public debt to sustain it.
The US economy is reliant upon consumer spending, and the top ten percent make up 50% of consumer spending.
A top-heavy economy… characterized by oligarchy, totalitarian monopolies with absolute control over prices and wages, massive debt and deficits, stripped down public services, massive consumer debt, endless wars, and ubiquitous wage slavery… all but ensure that Mr. Bessent’s fabled growth fairy will appear desiccated, emaciated, and flying on one wing & a prayer.
The US economy increasingly looks like a command economy with monopolies and oligopolies dominating various sectors of the economy, the wartime economy and police state juicing GDP and soaking up surplus labor, and of course, financialization and big tech rounding out sectors that need fewer employees as AI and automation grabs hold. Stir in gerontocracy and essentially a Uniparty and American looks a great deal like the Soviet Union in its final days.
Trump, at a time that America needs allies and friends more than ever, has managed to alienate the world, as only Trump can manage. Bessent’s pitiful plea, this Friday, for friends and foes to rally around the U.S. in crushing the Iranian economy, comes across as obscene, pathetic, and weak.
The fallout is obvious, domestically the stock market benefits the predatory few, even though when the bailouts inevitably arrive, the establishment says they’re looking out for the pension funds and the little guy’s 401K. A vehicle that used to be a way for businesses and startups to raise cash for CAPEX has become the tail that wags the dog, smothering the American economy and government. And financialization and the stock market (shareholder value uber alles) have become an abomination, that is entirely at odds with fiscal sanity, responsible foreign policy and governance. Just this Friday, the stock market was rising again, despite lousy fundamentals and a dollar that is wilting.
Put simply, financialization and Wall Street are dependent upon an ever-rising pool of private and public debt… essentially a Ponzi scheme. Therefore, Wall St, oligarchy, and private equity, at least in their present incarnation, must perish.
Nor does the fallout from catastrophic national debt and money printing – unlike America’s failed leadership – operate in a vacuum. People forget, Trump has clearly forgotten: The quid pro quo in allowing the U.S. to possess exorbitant privilege is the U.S. would be a reliable and responsible financial center and military force, the dollar would retain its worth as a storehouse of value… and the U.S., in turn, would enjoy all the benefits that accrue, like seemingly unlimited power, dollar hegemony, inflated financial markets (thanks to the petrodollar), and cheap financing.
But the U.S. hasn’t lived up to its side of the bargain: It’s trashed the dollar, deflated the dollar, run up obscene debt, its military hardware is grossly overpriced and defeated by China/Russia, via Iran. The rule of law that anchors the system is shredded, see Trump's attack on the ICC/ICJ and the revolving door bribes and pardons emanating from the White House. America’s ability to protect client states and allies is increasingly in question. Worse, a rogue POTUS has taken over, who is not only incompetent, myopically focused on self-enrichment, and is emotionally & mentally unstable, but is clearly willing to shakedown anyone and any nation for a buck.
The corrosive effects of all this… the $40 trillion in national debt; a burgeoning oligarchy with nothing but contempt for the U.S. government, democracy, and its people; and the transference of the nation’s credit line into the pockets of bankers, billionaires, multinationals, the oil & gas industry, and war contractors… is one of the greatest disasters to ever befall a nation.
In short, the United States is exactly what you get when insatiable greed, monopolies, rigged markets, a foreign government, and the Epstein class rules the nation: crony democracy is a ruse, entertainment, and a sideshow scam in a circus of lies.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026
