Is America Broke?

Silicon Valley investor and economic commentator Balaji Srinivasan made a startling post to social media yesterday. He thinks the U.S. is heading towards national bankruptcy with no possible solution to its debt crisis. He used a report from our own government that shows the national debt is $175 trillion and not the $36 trillion we always here about from our elected politicians and legacy news media!

Here is the content of his bombshell post with included graphic.

“The US is broke. The real debt is $175T+.

And @elonmusk is 100% correct on the numbers.

But the difficult step is the logical conclusion.

There is no fix. It’s a writeoff. A national bankruptcy.

And the default will be in the form of money printing.

From the 2024 Financial Report of the United States [1] comes the understatement of the century:

‘The total resources needed for all the programs sums to $175.3 trillion in PV terms. This need can be satisfied only through increased borrowing, higher taxes, reduced program spending, or some combination.’

Translation: the average American’s assets are the government’s collateral [2,3]. Because US citizens have freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms, but no amendment that establishes a max tax. As such, their assets will be seized to pay for their profligate state.

Much of that may be via inflation, but you should expect direct seizure as well, like Executive Order 6102. It’s just past time to be extremely realistic about what’s coming. The point of no return was passed long ago.

Because countries do go bankrupt, just like companies do. And it’s bad. There was a lot more shooting in the fall of the USSR than in a typical corporate bankruptcy. But it’ll be worse if you’re endlessly romantic about it, and aren’t prepared for what’s to come.”

The three sources Balaji footnotes in his opinion are found as follows:

[1] “From the 2024 Financial Report of the United States”

[2] “All It Takes Is All You Got: Your assets are the government’s collateral.”

[3] “America’s $175 Trillion Problem: The true state of the global financial system, in ten charts.”

It is easy to dismiss this viewpoint and discussion as a piece written by a Bitcoin investor/promotor of other forms of investment from the US Dollar or other forms of currency.

“The FDA Has Blood on its Hands? | Balaji Srinivasan | TRUTH Podcast #59” – Vivek Ramaswamy

But other highly intellectual people have been sounding the alarm, too.

“The US Dollar is almost WORTHLESS and we are heading for a DARK COLLAPSE” Dr. Ron Paul – Redacted

CONCLUSION:

This news story has bothered me for many years going back to when our national debt was only approximately $1.823 trillion in 1985. That figure represented the total amount of money owed by the federal government. The national debt was around 41% of the country’s GDP at the end of that fiscal year. That was not too bad compared to today but the reason why it alarmed me was how fast it had escalated in 5 years.

Ron Paul is an American author, activist, medical doctor, and was an elected politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas’s 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977, and again from 1979 to 1985, as well as for Texas’s 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. His son, Rand Paul, is also an elected politician who is currently serving as the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky since 2011. He, too, is also a medical doctor of ophthalmology.

The podcast titled “Redacted” is a much respected online news source owned and operated by married couple Clayton Morris, a former FOX News anchor, and Natali Morris, a former anchor and reporter for MSNBC, CNBC, and CBS News.

About the only thing that has shocked me in recent years was when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the Pentagon was missing taxpayer dollars in the TRILLIONS in 2001 and now Elon Musk and DOGE just found untraceable taxpayer dollars in the TRILLIONS in 2025! How does one lose TRILLIONS of dollars?!

What have our political elites been doing with all of our taxpayer trillions of dollars, well, some people may be now leaking a plausible answer as whistleblowers:

“Bush official claims US built secret $21T underground ‘city’ for rich and powerful to live if ‘near-extinction event’ happens” – New York Post

Secret Underground Bases All Across the US? (Clip)

Catherine Fitts: Power Grids, Bankers vs. the West, Secret Underground Bases, and Extinction Events (Full)

Interview mentioned by Catherine Fitts in above video: Richard Dolan Show May 14, 2018. Interview with Catherine Austin Fitts

The Missing Money – The Missing Money

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Stupid people will want to blame this on current Republican President Donald Trump or past Democrat President Joe Biden. The truth is the fault belongs to both parties and many past administrations.

The one thing I have always admired about former President Jimmy Carter, who many have called “the worst President in American history”, is he was a fellow Christian with a good heart. Many people forget that when he came to Washington, D.C. after being the Governor of Georgia, he wanted to impose a “Zero-Based Budget” program on all of Washington, D.C. just as he had begun in Georgia.

The idea was every office of government would be budgeted zero dollars at the start of the new fiscal year and then each office would have to come to the executive branch and legislative branch to make a proposal with a rationale as to any money they wanted to spend.

Of course with the bureaucracy and bloat of Washington, D.C. already at that time in 1977, his idea was instantly impractical and unworkable.  

© 2025 by Mark S. Schwendau