Is that all? LOL The Euro is structurally doomed because it's like a joint credit card account where everyone has to pay the bill regardless of who is running up charges. Let me know when the ECB stops buying Greek debt for example. I see zero evidence of a wide scale public shift towards fiscal conservatism in Europe.
The ECB did not buy Greek debt at a loss, quite the opposite. https://positivemoney.org/archive/ecb-smp-profits-billions-lost-for-greece/ Listen to Yanis Varoufakis about how he had to fight the ECB(Germany) to save what was left of Greece.
Interesting, but the devil is in the details "The exact amount of the profits made out of Greek bonds purchased under the SMP programme is not fully known by the public, but as we will later see, they are likely to have exceeded €13 billion." So they made this really smart "profit" but of course they just can't show us the details. It's not even clear whether these are actual profits that have actually been realized or dream profits based of fanciful interest rate and inflation predictions the stretch out for decades. It's amusing how quickly the article just assumes all other buyers were stupid for discounting the value. This line makes me wonder if they are assuming zero inflation " The key point, however, was that at the time, those bonds were being traded into the market at 30% to 40% of their nominal value. In other words, the ECB bought a bunch of bonds for €30, knowing it would eventually receive €100 back." It reads like a financially illiterate person thinking the the value of a bond is its face value with any accounting for inflation.
So I thought I'd take a look at other articles by the same author to see if my charge of financial illiteracy was fair. Except that no author is listed. So I go the the top level page and it spits this text at me "Positive Money is an international organisation working to redesign our economic system for social justice and a liveable planet. Please select your preferred region below to see what we are doing near you." Yeah. I wouldn't trust these people at all. Go to their publications and these are the first 3 to show up Inflation as an ecological phenomenon The fiscal benefits of a digital pound The impacts of the housing crisis on people of different ethnicities
Save the dollar by cutting the actual budget. Reversing momentums, gov't shrinks while private sector economy expands. Debt is thieves thieving, thieves escape accountability by buying the gov't. Term limits, get money out of politics.
Perhaps you can explain your comment that the "...U.S. has been exporting inflation to the rest of the world for decades." The U.S. is committed to paying interest on Treasury Bonds it's issued. Future interest represents a liability. If the interest is paid by printing, it's not debt; if paid from revenue, it's debt. The principle, nowadays, is always pre-paid by printing before the associated security is issued*, therefore the principle does not represent real debt. This is why I have referred elsewhere to the principle owed on Treasuries as "Ersatz Debt". Consequently it would not make sense to be concerned whether "the U.S. has enough gold to back its debt." In any case, even if the ersatz debt of the U.S. were real debt, it would not be backed by, or redeemed in gold. Let us not forget that the U.S., nowadays at least, has no debt. The "National Debt" is a fictitious political construct. (Never mind that it appears in lights in New York's Times Square!) I should mention that all money created by the U.S. Government is technically a liability of the government and a private sector asset. ____________________ *It is commonly thought that Treasury Bonds are issued to raise money to spend when revenues are insufficient to cover government expenditures. Nowadays, this is not true. It is standard practice of the U.S. Treasury to issue securities in amounts that equal all newly created money via deficit spending into the economy in payment for goods and services or to make transfer payments. Converting this new money into Treasury securities, in effect, sidetracks money into savings where it won't contribute to inflation. Typically, a portion of all new money converted to Treasuries may be later converted back to bank reserves by the Federal Reserve, consistent with the Fed's monetary policy goals. Thus, the purpose of issuing Treasuries is not only to serve as interest paying stores of money useful to the private sector and other Central Banks, but also to provide the Federal Reserve with a money regulation tool. The only risks associated with U.S. Treasuries are political and inflation risks. There is zero risk of U.S. government bankruptcy, and that's why Treasuries are often referred to as "riskless". The annual fight over a fictitious "debt ceiling" imagined by Republicans in Congress is, of course, a ridiculous absurdity useful to politicians who have convinced their naive constituents that the U.S. is wallowing in debt whenever they want to appear as though they are protecting us from further debt that would, they falsely say, "burden our grandchildren." The absurd specter of unconscionable U.S. debt is also useful to politicians when they want an excuse for not voting for a government expenditure they are ideologically opposed to. Of course there are limits to how rapidly Congress can expand or contract the total amount of U.S. money in the economy without causing excessive inflation or runaway interest servicing costs, but these limits have nothing to do with a U.S. debt that doesn't exist, rather they have, or should have, to do with the rate and direction of change in U.S. productivity.