Government debt

The important thing on government debt is how much is owed externally…. The national debt is largely held internally, but the game is changing as we run a trade deficit. So the trade deficit is a threat, essentially, to living as well as we live now. We are, essentially, selling off a little piece of the farm every day, as we run a trade deficit in order to finance our own consumption. We’ve got a very big rich farm, so we can sell a little piece of that farm for a long time without hardly noticing it.… We are giving the rest of the world claim checks on us. That has consequences over time.