Unlike most other major economies, the USA is making no attempt to narrow down its budget deficit. No attempt whatsoever. Instead, ANOTHER tax cut for the rich has just been voted in. This will lower funds further and widen the deficit. It might well reach -$1 trillion.

As debt increases, interest rises and the deficit widens further. It's a spiral whose end is bankruptcy. Unless the USA enacts some major changes, it'll trigger another recession.

I don't have any knowledge of US law in this regard, but I can envisage that defaulting on it's debt would be the equivalent of going bankrupt, in the same way that Argentina has defaulted on it's debt. If that was to happen, then the poorest in the country would undoubtedly feel it the worst as is usual with government imposed austerity measures.

Remember, Trump is noted for his bankruptcies. He was always bailed out but there is not bail out for the country. The ways things are going it is not just possible but inevitable.

Google 'AMERO' for a great conspiracy theory about this. All of North America joins up, so that we get the younger population and labor from Mexico and cheaper natural resources from Canada, then we default on the US debt and come up with the new currency, the Amero, to make the US the most powerful country in the world again. This idea has been around for twenty years, but it's one of the better ones!

There's a very high probability. Some blue chip companies are majority owned by foreign nationals. America's foreign debt and military spending are ridiculously high. And amazingly, high on the list of creditor nations is China!

It is always possible that the government defaults. There would have to be a conscience decision not to pay the outstanding debt. If we ever got to that point (I am more optimistic than the rest of the posts), I believe that it is more likely that the debt would be satisfied by printing more money.

History is littered with sovereign defaults.

If anyone can do it- it's the bankruptcy king himself-Twitler.

I believe at some point the debt levels will become unsustainable. Already a large portion of the budget goes just to make the interest payments on the money borrowed, and the amount of interest just increases as the debt increases. It will eventually all collapse. It is just a matter of when becaue deficit spending year after yer is just not sustainable over the long run.