re: While America Slept -- Bessent's Remarks to the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum

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We're on a path to a debt crisis AND a currency crisis. If the rest of the world wants to join us in going over that cliff, that's their problem

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While I completely agree with this, why are you so vigorously defending the person / administration that will have (by the end of his 2nd term) contributed roughly 30-40% of this problem?

This current economy is being held together by govt spending (ie debt) and a single entity w/ bubble possibilities (AI).

At some point, you have to call a spade a spade.

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My comments about the American economy are completely fact-based.

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Fact based or not (and that's debatable), they're irrelevant. The US consumes more than it produces, has done so every year for the last 50+. The trade deficit in goods is exploding higher (over a trillion a year now) at the same time the state and federal budget deficits are exploding higher. The combination of those deficits, trade and budget, are a ticking time bomb for the dollar and the only way to fix them is by consuming less and producing more. Every resolution will be very painful, i.e., not optimal. Most of them are involuntary at this point.

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Currency is almost entirely relative, as you have to have a replacement. The USD has no peer.

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This is the silliest argument ever used in a debate; we're too big, too important, to fail. It's so patently absurd that it's not worth debating. Every massive tree eventually rots and falls. Every fiat currency eventually falls too. The US dollar may collapse in isolation or simultaneously along with every other abused fiat currency, but it's headed for a fall relative to things with intrinsic value. No matter how that plays out, we will suffer greatly when the next currencies become materials needed for survival.

You didn't give me your "optimal" solution. I guess you can say "optimal" is relative too, but if you think that means less painful than tariffs, you're mistaken. The pain is baked into the cake.

It's a valid question, and the answer is that Trump is at least addressing the problems. Tariffs for trade, cutting bureaucracy for budget, fixing illegal immigration for budget. The other side tried none of that, entrenched Republicans have done nothing, Congress has done nothing, states have done nothing, and they all actively obstruct every attempt Trump makes to change anything, up to and including judicial overreach and violent means. The better question than why support Trump is "who else has suggested anything better"?

As for Trump's contribution to our debt, Covid and interest on the debt, exploding social security, medicare, welfare state, were a massive part of those expenditures. I posted on this board in 2016 that our federal debt would double over the next 10 years; it did. If Trump had neglected to fund any of those exploding costs above, you'd be accusing him of having crashed the economy several years ago.

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You’re taking a legitimate concern about deficits and overconsumption and stretching it into ‘collapse is inevitable, pain is baked in, and anyone questioning the path is unserious.’

That’s a very confident view but it’s not the same thing as having settled the debate.

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People don't like that discussion, but I started studying this in the 1980's. Not chat boards, but textbooks, technical books, data, reading, studying and trying to understand it from every angle. I, along with many others, knew we were headed for a debt crisis well before the collapse of 2008. I never thought we'd be so foolish as to print money as the solution. Didn't even attempt to address the debt; just the oppposite. When that happened, I read and studied more until I understood that we're now facing a currency crisis. We're going to devalue the dollar at an accelerating pace. Nothing I can say here will summarize all of that, so if you believe otherwise, we're at an impass.