Elon Musk says America will be ‘toast’ and US dollar will be worth ‘nothing’ without fast action — what he means

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Elon Musk says America will be ‘toast’ and US dollar will be worth ‘nothing’ without fast action — what he means

America is undeniably an economic powerhouse, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk — the richest person in the U.S. and the world — is sounding the alarm about its financial future.

“The country is going bankrupt. If we don’t take action, the dollar’s going to be worth nothing,” Musk said during a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Musk’s alarm centers on the ballooning U.S. national debt, which currently stands at $36.17 trillion. Managing this staggering debt comes with a hefty price: interest payments alone are a significant and growing strain on government finances.

“The interest payments, which are already 23% of all government income… is just going to pay interest right now, and that number is continually rising,” Musk explained. “So if we don’t do something, the entire government budget will be paying interest — there won’t be money for anything. No, there won’t be money for Social Security, there won’t be money for Medicare, nothing. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what bankruptcy means.”

The numbers paint a grim picture. In fiscal year 2024, interest on U.S. federal debt totaled $1.1265 trillion, while the federal government collected $4.92 trillion in revenue.

Musk stressed the urgency of the situation: “I’m looking at the numbers here and I’m like, if we don’t do something, America is toast.”

Whether America can technically go bankrupt is a complicated question because the federal government cannot file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Instead, Congress would have to decide to let the federal government default on its debt, otherwise it can keep borrowing as long as there is demand from investors for government bonds.

“Technically speaking, the government can’t go bankrupt because it only promised to hand over a certain number of dollars; it didn’t promise what the value of those dollars would be. Because the value of the dollars was never specified, the government can print enough to render the dollars nearly worthless. To the rest of us, the effect is the same as the government going bankrupt,” write the co-hosts of podcast “Words & Numbers.”

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