Why All Roads Lead To Money Printing

A structural breakdown of why all roads in the US fiscal system lead to monetary debasement. The starting number is $28.8 trillion in debt held by the public, with total federal debt now matching its World War II peak relative to GDP. Three problems compound. First, the debt is politically unpayable. Deficits no longer shrink when unemployment falls, the US is running wartime-scale deficits at full employment, and 86% of the budget (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defence, and net interest) is mandatory. The DOGE experiment ran into this wall, and growth cannot close a $2T structural gap when private credit creation has been overwhelmed by government borrowing since 2020. Second, monetary policy can no longer contain the inflation that overspending causes. The era of structurally falling rates is over, net interest expense now exceeds defence spending, and under every rate scenario nominal debt keeps growing. The Fed is trapped, hike and detonate the deficit, cut and entrench inflation. A modern Volcker is impossible at 122% debt-to-GDP. Third, markets cannot absorb the issuance indefinitely. Foreign ownership has fallen from 47% to 30% as the weaponisation of Treasuries (Russian reserves, frozen overnight in February 2022) destroyed the credible neutrality of US debt, leaving the Fed as the only buyer with a balance sheet large enough to fill the gap. That is money printing with extra steps. The 1942 to 1951 yield curve control playbook (cap yields, let inflation run, inflate the debt away over a decade) is the precedent, but this time savers can vote with their feet in real time. Bitcoin is the only door still open, with speed gold cannot match, seizure resistance gold cannot offer, and a 21 million hard cap priced in an infinitely expandable currency. The repricing has already begun. The only debate is the speed.