{"id":59111,"date":"2026-08-21T11:16:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T11:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/us-debt-has-hit-40tn-will-that-be-a-wake-up-call\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T11:16:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T11:16:43","slug":"us-debt-has-hit-40tn-will-that-be-a-wake-up-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/us-debt-has-hit-40tn-will-that-be-a-wake-up-call\/","title":{"rendered":"US debt has hit $40tn &#8211; Will that be a wake-up call?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The US is nearing its $41.1tn debt ceiling, with debt forecast to climb to about $64tn by 2036, according to the Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the situation is not yet critical, say economists. The US&#8217;s position as the world&#8217;s largest economy and the dollar being the world&#8217;s reserve currency gives the US a &#8220;much longer runway to fiscally misbehave&#8221; than other countries, El-Erian says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re getting to a point where it&#8217;s a flashing yellow light. It&#8217;s not a flashing red light,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swanson says other countries have had similar, or higher debt levels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While US national debt is 126% compared with the size of the economy, it&#8217;s lower than other G7 nations Japan and Italy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But investor appetite in lending the US government money through buying bonds is &#8220;diminishing&#8221;, Swanson warns, creating a &#8220;vicious&#8221; cycle, requiring the government to offer ever higher returns to keep investors purchasing its debt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And higher US borrowing costs inevitably spill over, raising other countries&#8217; borrowing costs too. &#8220;What happens in the US never stays in the US,&#8221; says El-Erian.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Charlie Bean, emeritus economics professor at the London School of Economics, says that if the US debt to economy ratio hits a certain point it could start a fire sale of US bonds and lead to financial market turmoil.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There probably is a point, but unfortunately we don&#8217;t know where it is,&#8221; he says. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s not as if there&#8217;s a fixed number that we could say, you know,  &#8216;if it gets to 150 percent, you know, disaster will happen, but we&#8217;re OK if we stay at 145&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c9d8z72nn02o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US is nearing its $41.1tn debt ceiling, with debt forecast to climb to about $64tn by 2036, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But the situation is not yet critical, say economists. The US&#8217;s position as the world&#8217;s largest economy and the dollar being the world&#8217;s reserve currency gives the US a &#8220;much longer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59113,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59111\/revisions\/59113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}