What about accumulated debt? Credit dependent growth, near zero interest rates for so long, much more competitive international trade?
You can't bath in the same river twice.
Using only debt approx 3.8yrs to most likely max out debt/gdp but when you combine printing you can extend that out further.
It’ll be death by a thousand paper cuts and then BAM insolvency overnight and your head is chopped off. Bond rates won’t show it but the credit markets will as costs to insure debt will skyrocket.
You can break that down like this:
28T debt paying 1.5% interest on a 30Y bond is 420B (0.42T).
The US economy is 22T for arguments sake so the interest component would be 1.9% of GDP with total debt being 130% of GDP.
US tax revenues are around 3.7T making interest repayments 11% of govt revenues. That’s really the key part in answering your question as this is how they service debt from revenue. In other words today it’s a non-issue for servicing debt.
So what level would it really hurt at? Well Greece is proper fucked and they are at 180% meanwhile Japan has been at stagflation for decades sitting at 230%. I’d say let’s assume 230% debt to GDP as a ceiling.
M2 is 20T and we are adding 4T a year but it costs more than that so let’s say 6T per year to keep the GDP fixed at 22T. Debt maxed at 230% = 51T-28T/6=3.8yrs using only bonds to raise enough debt to keep afloat.
Hence why I say people get all these collapse calls wrong all the time. If I stand outside and say it’ll rain I’ll eventually be correct but that doesn’t mean I have any understanding or knowledge about the weather system. I just kept guessing.