While $34 trillion is a very large figure, it's a lot less scary than many imagine if you put it in historical and international context. To the extent debt is a concern, making debt sustainable wouldn't be at all hard in terms of the straight economics; it's almost entirely a political problem.
Today, debt as a percentage of G.D.P. isn't unprecedented, even in America: It's roughly the same as it was at the end of World War II. It's considerably lower than the corresponding number for Japan right now and far below Britain's debt ratio at the end of World War II. In none of these cases was there anything resembling a debt crisis.
Almost every debt crisis in the historical record involved a country that borrowed in someone else's currency, which left it vulnerable to a liquidity crunch when lenders for some reason ran for the exits and it couldn't print cash to pay them off until the panic subsided.
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