To the clients and friends of ProfitScore:

We’re Fine. (We’re Not Fine)

Our National Debt is 38.9 Trillion Dollars

Let me put $38.9 trillion in terms that mean something.

One million seconds is 11.6 days. 
One billion seconds is 31.7 years. 
And 38.9 trillion seconds? That’s 1.23 million years! Keep this number in mind.

How in Sam Hell do you spend that much money?
U.S. National Debt, 1980-2026

Seriously. That number is so cosmically absurd it almost breaks your brain trying to process it. Which is exactly why people keep asking the same question: If the Fed can just create money, why don’t they print enough to wipe the debt out?

Seems obvious, right?

Here’s the thing… they actually kind of already do.

When the government runs a deficit, it issues Treasury bonds. Investors buy them: banks, pension funds, and foreign governments. Sometimes the Fed steps in too. And when it does, it doesn’t crack open some vault. It creates bank reserves electronically and uses those to buy the bonds.

That’s Quantitative Easing. We saw a lot of it after 2008. Even more during COVID.

So money creation already helps finance the debt. But there’s a massive difference between occasionally supporting markets and firing up the presses to erase trillions overnight.

Trying to erase the debt?!  That’s where it gets ugly.


The Inflation Problem

Imagine doubling the money supply overnight while the number of goods and services stays the same.

Too much money. Same amount of stuff.

Prices rise. Push it far enough, and you get hyperinflation, the nightmare scenario economists lose sleep over. Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Zimbabwe in the 2000s. Venezuela, more recently.

Different circumstances, same ending. When confidence in a currency breaks, it’s nearly impossible to rebuild.


The Confidence Problem

Here’s the part most people miss.

The dollar’s reserve currency status is arguably America’s most valuable geopolitical asset. Global trade runs on dollars. Central banks hold dollars. Investors worldwide buy U.S. Treasuries because they’re considered the safest asset on the planet.
That trust has real, tangible value, and it’s fragile.

If the U.S. announced it was printing its way out of debt, every sovereign wealth fund and institutional investor on earth would start asking the same uncomfortable question: if they can print freely, what are these dollars actually worth?

Foreign buyers pull back. Investors demand higher yields to compensate for inflation risk. Borrowing costs go up, not down.
Ironically, the “solution” makes the problem worse.


How Debt Actually Gets Managed

Here’s the honest, less dramatic answer.

Most countries don’t pay off debt the way you’d pay off a mortgage. They roll it forward while the economy grows. If GDP grows faster than debt, the burden shrinks relative to national income. Moderate inflation quietly erodes the real value of existing obligations over time.

Not flashy. Not satisfying. But stable.

You are probably wondering…. how long will this take?

With my back-of-the-napkin calculation, let’s see, 38.8 trillion… carry the one… Hmmmmm….. With this strategy it’s going to take 1.23 million years to pay off!!!!!

Printing money at scale risks inflation, rising rates, and, most critically, the collapse of global confidence in the dollar.

And in finance? Confidence is the whole game.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.