"Insolvent” is the wrong frame.
The higher-signal way to read this is:
- interest is already taking a large share of receipts
- debt-to-GDP is still rising
- the government is still running a primary deficit
So this is not about the U.S. “running out of money.”
It is about the budget getting squeezed before any crisis headline arrives.
When you are still borrowing before interest,
and then layering interest on top,
interest starts competing with everything else.
That is the mechanism.
Not insolvency.
A fiscal squeeze.
And it is not a distant problem anymore.
These charts fit “fiscal squeeze” better than “insolvency”
1) Debt keeps rising
2) Interest burden is rising vs receipts
3) Interest is now ~18–19% of receipts
Not a market-access problem.
A cash-flow problem.
Debt keeps rising as interest takes a larger share of receipts.
“Can still borrow” is actually the mechanism here.
How can there be a fiscal squeeze if they always have access to more debt?
I suppose you could say that the treasury still has to find buyers at its auctions.
Interest as a percent of tax receipts doesn't look like too big a squeeze:
Edit: at first I only found a chart through 2022. Then I found this one through 2024, definitely looking worse:
but it does seem more like a squeeze here:
I'd be curious to see both these charts with 2025 on them.
For as much as I dislike Hanke, he's good here.
Also, you can just tax the rich, no??