There’s a new villain in town, and it doesn’t wear a uniform or burn a flag. It doesn’t even tweet. It just sits there, quietly siphoning trillions out of the federal budget like a vampire with direct deposit.

Its name? Interest on the national debt.

No theme music. No fiery speeches. Just numbers compounding faster than Washington can make excuses. This dull, silent killer now costs more than the U.S. spends defending itself, and soon it could cost more than we spend on seniors and retirees. We’re paying more to service old borrowing than to protect, heal, or feed the people who lent us their trust.

Seventy-one days. That’s how long it took the federal government to blow through another trillion bucks like a teenager with a stolen credit card.

In August, we crossed $37 trillion. By late October, $38 trillion. As of Oct. 30:

$38,051,813,354,700.26

Thirty-eight trillion. And change.

This face-plant into debt comes despite record tariff revenue and a fresh “media relations campaign.” The CBO once said we wouldn’t hit $37 trillion until 2030.

Missed by six years. Oops.

We were at $34 trillion in January 2024. $35 trillion by November. Then Congress lifted the ceiling with the “Big Beautiful Bill,” adding $5 trillion in borrowing capacity. In under two months, we blew past $37 trillion. Two months later… $38 trillion. $39 trillion is already warming up in the bullpen.

Tariffs won’t save us. Revenue is up. Deficits are still massive. The problem is spending. Washington burned $7 trillion last year, up 4 percent during “tightening.” The diet talk is theater; fiscal 2026 will gorge again.

Do you remember back in 2010, Ben Bernanke swore quantitative easing was “temporary?” Liquidity would be mopped up; the balance sheet would shrink; the Fed would fade into the shadows. Fourteen years later, that “temporary measure” is the operating system. The detour became the highway. The bailout was institutionalized. The emergency never ended, only the definition of “normal.”

Now for the human math. If every American wrote a check for $110,641, the slate would be clean. For taxpayers, the bill is $327,507 each. That’s a house in much of America, traded for a receipt reading, “Thanks for funding waste and zombie programs.”

One trillion is monstrous; 38 trillion is almost unfathomable. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. Spend $1 million a day since the birth of Christ and you still don’t hit $1 trillion. Stack $1 bills to 67,866 miles. That’s one trillion. We’re 38 times past that.

Cue the “debt doesn’t matter” crowd.

President Madison called public debt a “public curse.” President Jefferson: “the greatest danger.” President Washington: paying it down was the most urgent financial priority. They fought a revolution over tea. Imagine their faces at $38 trillion of IOUs.

Debt strangles growth. We’re at 120% debt-to-GDP; above 90% is linked to growth hits of up to 30%. Interest now costs more than Medicare or Defense. Only Social Security is larger. We’re borrowing to pay interest on previous borrowing — loan-shark economics. If the world doubts the dollar’s safety, lights out.

That’s why the Fed is hinting at ending balance-sheet reduction and cutting rates despite sticky inflation. The government needs cheap debt; the Fed must keep buying Treasuries, which means printing, which means your paycheck gets chewed by inflation.

People say, “They’ve warned for decades, and nothing happened.”

That’s how crises arrive:

Slowly.

Then all at once.

We’re sprinting through the “slowly” phase.

Every time America cornered itself before, we escaped by changing the rules: War of 1812 missed payments; Lincoln’s greenbacks; 1933 gold clauses voided; 1968 silver redemption ended; 1971 the gold window slammed. That isn’t honoring debts; it’s redefining payment.

Today’s spiral is worse. The debt is unmanageable. Interest is already over $1.1 trillion a year and could leapfrog Social Security next. Entitlements grow with retiring Boomers. Defense is politically sacrosanct. Welfare is locked by voting blocs. The leader who would cut deeply won’t be elected. Spending only goes one way: up.

So, raise taxes? Even seizing every billionaire’s dollar funds barely cover a year. The meter restarts the next morning. The interest sinkhole widens. Tricks won’t hide it. We approach the point where we can’t pay honestly.

Default won’t look like 1933 or 1971. It will be a slow-motion vanish — debasing dollars while pretending it’s normal. With fiat, Washington can stiff everyone by paying in shrinking money. Same trick, new costume.

The glue is Fed “independence.” That fiction is dissolving. The government needs ultra-cheap financing; the Fed cuts, prints, buys, and repeats until inflation becomes the roommate who never moves out. That’s the default: credibility shredded, not payments missed.

Foreign central banks see it. They’re buying gold. They’ve read the script.

The default won’t explode. It will bleed. The dollar shrinks. Confidence cracks.

This is unfolding right now.

There was a time when $1 trillion in debt made front-page alarm. It took over 200 years to reach the first trillion, nearly a decade for the second. Then the 21st century snapped something. $10T to $30T took 14 years. Now a trillion barely lasts a fiscal season. The jump from $37T to $38T took 71 days.

We now add one trillion every 71 days. That’s a financial panic in slow motion. The bars shrink like the oxygen in a diving bell. What once took generations now happens between barbecues. Risk isn’t linear — it’s exponential.

The message couldn’t be louder: The debt isn’t just increasing, its speed is exploding.

Here’s the bumper sticker Washington won’t print: the money is gone before it’s created.

Social Security: ≈ $1.3T

Medicare: ≈ $874B

Defense: ≈ $875B

Interest: ≈ $1T and climbing

Those four almost swallow revenue. Everything else — roads, schools, veterans, borders, air traffic — runs on borrowed cash. That’s triage. When interest outruns revenue, the debt runs the government. Every new dollar is tribute to the past. You can’t run a superpower on leftovers.

Each trillion means more interest, more refinancing pressure, more of the budget swallowed just to keep collectors from knocking. “Unsustainable” is too polite. This is a cliff labeled “Yikes.”

Net interest is the fastest-rising expense in Washington. It compounds. The CBO sees ~$1.8T by 2035. If this path holds, interest becomes the #1-line item in the early-to-mid 2030s — call it 2034. Picture a horror movie: footsteps, swelling music, “Don’t open that door!” Then interest kicks it open and takes the top slot. No new tanks, meds, or checks — just paying yesterday’s promises with tomorrow’s money.

America used to build rockets, railroads, and dreams. Now it builds debt. We owe $38T. Interest already beats Medicaid, is neck-and-neck with Defense, and is on pace to leapfrog Medicare and Social Security. At that point, we’ll fund not a government, but the cost of having one. A nation can survive enemies abroad; it can’t survive math it refuses to believe.

Interest is a crisis category. We borrow for almost everything: Social Security checks, Medicare reimbursements, loans, subsidies, disaster aid. The programs meant to provide stability are being undermined by the cost of sustaining them. Each tick up in rates makes promises pricier; each delay deepens the hole. Debt now competes not just with aircraft carriers but with grandma’s healthcare, veterans’ benefits, and teacher salaries. The debt devours everything in sight.

Inflation isn’t an accident; it’s policy. When taxes won’t cover it, we print. The dollar shrinks, your bill grows, and Washington feigns shock. Inflation is an unvoted tax that hits the poor hardest, the middle next, and the rich least. It also guts defense; the same jet costs far more. That’s arithmetic treason. A nation drowning in inflation is weakened from within.

Politicians say America has never defaulted. This is half true. We pay in full — just not in full value. Euphemisms mask a slow-motion theft. Foreign central banks know; they’re stacking gold. The quiet default is in progress. Taxpayers are the last to know.

This isn’t just about defense. It’s about every pillar of stability. If interest keeps climbing: Social Security edges toward insolvency; Medicare becomes a slow-motion train wreck; infrastructure money shrinks to pothole management; education slides; defense gets scraps. Every “free” promise today is more interest tomorrow. At this pace we aren’t governing a nation; we’re managing a collection agency.

The math isn’t partisan. The courage should be. In my opinion, America needs to:

· Stop pretending growth will outrun debt.

· Cap real spending.

· Reform entitlements gradually before crisis reforms them brutally.

· Prioritize defense and essentials over vote-buying.

· Balance budgets in good times.

Tell the truth that Washington hasn’t in decades: We can’t do it all.

The window to act is narrow — a mail slot — but it’s open.

America doesn’t fall because enemies out-spend us.

It’s currently sinking because interest out-earns us.

Every dollar to creditors is a dollar not spent on soldiers, seniors, or schools. Every trillion in interest is a trillion not used to build, protect, or innovate. We call ourselves the arsenal of democracy. Arsenals need budgets. Budgets need oxygen. Interest is sucking the oxygen out of the room.

This isn’t just about national defense anymore. It’s the defense of the social contract. The next time a politician brags about “priorities,” ask: Who’s the priority — the American people, or the creditors collecting compound interest?

We still have time. We still have the means. We still have the will, if we choose it.

The clock is ticking.

Math doesn’t filibuster.

The Road to the Crack-Up Boom

Every currency death has the same plotline: too much debt, too much denial, and too little honesty. Ludwig von Mises, the father of Austrian Economics called the finale the “crack-up boom” — the point where people stop believing the money will hold its value and rush to exchange it for anything that will hold value.

We’re not talking about some academic theory. We’re describing the last chapter of every empire that tried to finance comfort with counterfeit prosperity.

The logic is brutal: when governments create money faster than the economy can create goods, the unit of account becomes a unit of illusion. People stop saving in it. Prices explode not because the value of things rises, but because faith in money collapses.

It’s the moment when everyone realizes the fire alarm isn’t hypothetical.

Nine out of ten boxes are checked. The last one — collapse of money demand — is already flickering in the distance. The next phase comes when the public finally grasps that the dollar isn’t a store of value but a coupon for government promises that can’t be kept.

At this point, the “boom” part of the crack-up boom begins. Everyone rushes to get rid of cash before it loses more value, bidding up real assets in a panic. Stocks soar, gold explodes, and real estate turns into a bidding war between survival instincts.

It feels like prosperity on the surface, but it’s the currency burning in slow motion. And this phase of the process can last years.

The moral of the Mises story is simple: you can postpone reality, but you can’t cancel it. When governments debase trust long enough, the market always does the math—and math never negotiates.

When a government devalues its own currency, it doesn’t just rob savers — it quietly rewrites the rules of wealth. Every dollar you’ve earned, every hour you’ve worked, every plan you’ve made for the future is suddenly worth a little less than it was yesterday. That’s what Mises warned us about in his “crack-up boom.” It’s the final act of monetary delusion — where confidence in paper money disintegrates and everyone rushes toward anything real. In that world, knowledge and timing aren’t optional anymore. They’re oxygen.

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