I would argue collapse is not as simple as it seems. The formerly rich in their mansion can burn the furniture to keep warm. They might even sell it as "We are so rich, we can burn expensive furniture!"

After WWII the British Empire was in seriously deep debt. They went on a tour of their various colonies, asking them to accept a pause on interest payments. Many of them did. They thought they were being secretive about this.

Except, this only underlined to everyone (as everyone knew) that the pound was mostly dead.

But, the UK didn't just collapse into a heap of burning rubble. They kept on with various war rationing, import barriers, etc, until about 55, then they started clawing their way out of the mess. Even Thatcher was fighting this fight in the 70s and 80s.

I would argue, that the US is mostly in the same situation. They are highly relevent to the world, but as the article points out, in steady decline.

As time goes by, certain tradeoffs, which made sense in the past, are likely to be recinded by different parts of the world.

For example. A massive one is that the US has been allowed to dominate the world's financial systems in various ways from its currency, to the swift system, to banking, to finance, and more. This was allowed in exchange for the US having a military which could offset the Soviets. This was only a semi-formal agreement. Even with the Soviet empire falling apart, there wasn't a huge amount of pushback on this. The EU knew that as it grew this would naturally weaken.

But, with a combination of Biden's anemic support for Ukraine along with the batshit crazy stuff various US officials have said, even in the last 48 hours, the EU, along with most of the west, know the US is a fair weather friend at best now. The various "Special Relationships" are over.

This is a long winded way to reach my main point.

Until now, the US debt has arguably been fine, as it really is world debt. It is less the US debt to GDP ratio, as it is the world GDP which was supporting it. But, as the world pulls away from the US, and is no longer willing to put up with being bullied, the US is now going to be left more and more to deal with its own debt.

Where this can "quickly" show up is with short consecutive set of debt auctions. When the treasury auctions off debt they mostly have the numbers all worked out ahead of time; who will buy what for what rates; sometimes there just aren't enough buyers and the feds are able to force increased domestic buying. This is combined with threats and bullying (long before trump) to get other countries to continue buying this crap. But, those threats are becoming worthless as more and more countries are realizing they have to make a stand now, or trump and his thugs will walk all over them. This means that there are countries out there which are not going to show up at the next debt auction. They will make this excuse or that excuse, but they just won't show up. trump will lose his mind and open up a torrent of threats, but they will say, "You mean more threats like your last lot, or the lot before, or the ones the week before that? Lose my number."

At first, the fed will be able to make this look like business as usual; as fed auctions are technically public, but are actually all backroom deals; so it will be hard to see one or two bad auctions as anything but a blip. But, I predict three sets of auctions will happen:

• One or two where many of the usual players don't show up.
• A few where some unusual players show up, or at least unusual in the vastly increased quantity of debt they buy. I suspect some of these deals aren't real, and the US will be quietly buying their own debt this way.
• Even these players won't be able to keep up the pretense. Quite simply, the trillions that are in play would require anything but the largest economies in the world to dump their entire gross national product into US debt auctions and still not make a dent.

Then, the stories will leak out that, just like the WWII British Empire, the US is going to their friends and asking for a pause in interest payments. These "friends" will say, "Of course, not a problem." and then tell their finance people to dump that debt as fast as they can. As in, within days. They will begin dumping it at huge discounts.

This last is not quite the straw which breaks the camel's back. It means any future debt auctions will be disasters. But the US will use it's still huge influence to punish anyone who is selling debt at massive discounts; things like terminating that debt. The second this happens, nobody but the extremely stupid will accept US debt as a medium of exchange.

This last will instantly bung up world trade for the US. A company like Ford will reach out to some international supplier of rubber, steel, etc, and say, "Hey; we want our usual order of 100m in your product." and the foreign sales guy will say, "Great, but, one tiny problem, our finance people are being d*cks and want to be paid in something other than US treasuries." The Ford guy will say, "No problem, our guys will sort that out."

Then the Ford guy will call the finance department to organize this, and they finance guy will shout, "F*ck, not another one." now importing companies like Ford will be scrambling to buy various currencies around the world; a scramble which means the demand is wildly outstripping the supply, and the reverse will be true for US dollar instruments; the supply will wildly exceed demand.

Some companies like Ford will have international revenue which can mitigate the pain, but many companies do not; and they are screwed.

Just as the article said, though, things will look fine, right up until they start to degrade. But, like the fallen aristocrats burning the furniture to keep warm, the US has fairly large reserves of things it can sacrifice to keep things on a seemingly even keel. There will be economists ringing alarm bells as they point out the US furniture reserve is down to just the front entrance, but other economist talking heads will be laughing and saying, "Oh, look at chicken little. The US economy is only going from strength to strength and will be solid right through this century."

The key time to panic is when the feds start to make statements about "not panicking" and "There will be no capital controls; and whoever is saying this is just being alarmist."