, Columnist
In American Debt We Trust — But for How Long?
Fiscal hawks forget about the extraordinary faith that creditors have in the US's ability to make good on its promises.
Time for cuts.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
This is part of a series of Bloomberg Opinion columns exploring the risks related to the US’s rapidly expanding debt and budget deficit. Other contributions can be read here, here and here.
America’s national debt would have horrified Ronald Reagan. When he inherited a nation on the cusp of an unnerving milestone of $1 trillion in debt in 1981, he described it as a problem that had grown “literally beyond our comprehension.”