Assignment:
Can the U.S. Federal Debt Ever be Repaid?
About four years ago, Simon Black, of "Sovereign Man" blog, published an article (and accompanying YouTube video) titled "Paying down the debt is now almost mathematically impossible." While the spreadsheet model is shown in the video, it isn't published anywhere, and there is insufficient information to replicate the results.
Accordingly, in this assignment, you will create a spreadsheet to assess whether the U.S. can, in fact, ever repay its debts under plausible conditions.
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/paying-down -the -debt -is-now -almost -mathematically impossible -15729/
This project is all about making assumptions, justifying/explaining them, and then performing sensitivity analyses.
At a minimum:
1. You need to provide two or more default criteria.
• One pretty obvious one is when gross mandatory expenditures (including interest) exceed gross revenues.
2. You need to determine which type of debt you're examining -debt held by the public, or gross debt, or both.
3. You need to make tax revenue assumptions.
4. You need to make assumptions about GDP growth rates.
5. You need to make assumptions about interest rates on existing and/ or new debt.
6. You need to make assumptions about growth rates of assorted federal programs.
Your actual write-up will include a description of the current debt situation, a discussion of your methodology including assumptions, discussion of results including several sensitivity analyses, and your opinion as to whether the U.S. federal debt can ever be repaid. I do NOT want a spreadsheet. I DO want charts and tabulated results, as appropriate.