Your Money Is Being Stolen in Slow Motion

I watched something last week that I haven't been able to shake.

Lyn Alden sat down with Peter McCormack and described the global financial system in six words none of us wants to hear.

Grab your coffee.

This one sits with you.…

The US sovereign debt crisis isn't arriving.

It arrived years ago — dressed as rising rent, shrinking pay cheques, and a grocery bill no one can explain. In a long conversation with Peter McCormack, analyst Lyn Alden described the system we all live inside. Governments print money. Debt crosses $39 trillion. The people holding the currency absorb the damage. She didn't mince it:

"By the end, it resembles theft."

The only crime where the victim blames themselves for not earning enough.

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Let's start where Alden did.

Every country runs a ledger. Central banks control the base money. Commercial banks multiply it roughly fivefold through lending. Politicians — every colour, every era — spend more than they tax. The gap gets filled by printing new money to buy government bonds. We feel it as inflation.

They call it policy.

Since Nixon cut the dollar from gold in 1971, the dollar has been diluted to 12 cents of its former self.

The system doing this is 55 years old — younger than many of the people it's hurting. We treat it like gravity.

It's a policy choice.

So who's winning?

Alden made a line I can't stop thinking about: "The best product Coca-Cola ever sold was their bonds, not their Coke."

When a corporation issues billions in bonds at low rates, it borrows in today's dollars. It repays in weaker ones. It's shorting the currency. Governments do it. The wealthy do it. Yes — homeowners with a fixed-rate mortgage run the same trade, and it's the best financial move most people ever make.

But a household's mortgage is a rounding error next to what sovereigns and corporations borrow.

The people with no assets at all — renters, cash savers, those at the bottom — absorb the full hit with no hedge.

We socialise the losses. They lock in the gains.

US interest payments now exceed defence spending.

The CBO projects debt rising to 120% of GDP by 2036. Each American household carries roughly $288,000 in national debt — nobody signed up for it. And AI? Alden said it buys time, nothing more. Productivity gains can mask money printing — handy if you're a policymaker hoping to retire before the bill arrives. But you can't print a home. You can't print energy.

The cheat code has limits.

Pro: Currency flexibility lets governments respond to crises, fund Social Security, and dodge 1930s-style deflation spirals — and much of the spending it enables goes directly to the poorest.

Con: The flexibility only runs in one direction. Spending goes up. Purchasing power goes down. And the cost lands on the people with the fewest options.

Our read: Alden's view is a lens, not a gospel. But the numbers fit it uncomfortably well. The system does work — for those who borrow against it. If you're saving in cash and waiting for the rules to feel fair, you'll be waiting a long time.

[Report] Congressional Budget Office — "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036"

Federal debt held by the public rises from 101% of GDP to 120% by 2036. Deficits average 6.1% of GDP across the decade.

Why it matters: This isn't a doom blog. It's the US government's own baseline. And it assumes no new recessions, no new wars, no new crises. Sleep well.

Three months of 2026 interest exceeded all of FY 2017's. — EPIC

Lyn Alden — "A Flywheel of Chaos" — Her March newsletter maps how sovereign debt and war feed each other on repeat. If today's issue hit a nerve, this goes deeper.

Fortune — Trump's $1.5 Trillion Defence Ask — The proposed fix for interest exceeding defence spending: borrow more to spend more on defence. Read it twice. The maths doesn't change.

Pragmatic Capitalism — "Has the Dollar Really Lost 99%?" — The strongest counter to this entire issue. Argues that the fiat era coincided with the greatest wealth creation in history. Read it. Then decide.

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For the love of coffee, see you tomorrow!

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