America’s ‘Debt Spiral’ Is Nearing a Critical Threshold

When the US borrows money, it needs to pay its loans back with interest—just like any other borrower. But America’s national debt is currently $34 trillion and rising. Soon, the US will need to spend more each year paying interest than what it spends on national defense.

In the last few weeks, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin told Bloomberg TV that the US economy is “in a terrible place,” and Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb warned that “a debt spiral is like a death spiral.”

“It’s a slow spiral, but it’s still a spiral—of rising debt and rising payments on the debt,” Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, tells the Big Take DC podcast. “ The situation is unsustainable.”