Who absorbs the adjustment
The mechanism is right as Luke states, and I’d argue it’s the correct play.
Term the debt into bills, build real demand for those bills through stablecoins, and get the interest line down. Every option on the table is a version of who absorbs the adjustment. Austerity absorbs it through the real economy, and nobody has ever voted for it. Higher rates absorb it through the budget, crowding out everything else. Repression absorbs it slowly, over years, while growth does the heavy lifting.
That’s the 1946 template, and it worked. Bills near zero, the long end capped, and the debt melted by half by 1960. No default, no crisis, and the postwar boom happened anyway. Financial repression plus real growth is the only path out of a debt load like this that has ever actually run.
Bessent seems to be running it deliberately: manage the interest expense, term short, create structural demand for Treasuries, let productivity grow the denominator.
The saver still pays the bridge toll. That’s not a scandal, it’s the math, and it’s been true since 1946. So position for it.