With the nation’s deficit continuing its ever larger upward spiral, it’s easy to wonder what will become of this great nation in time. As a group, the country has overspent to such a large extent, for such a large amount of time, that it owes far more than it produces in a year. Represented by the government bond market, the total amount of funds owed are astonishing to the uninitiated. Bonds represent money that was borrowed with promises to pay backing the borrowing. They’ve grown steadily for decades, as the collective United States consumer mentality has used up more than it has produced. As spending has ruled the, ahem, decades, those promises to pay back the borrowings haven’t resulted in action.

Unfortunately, a side product of a seemingly healthy bond market is that debt rarely gets paid off, or even paid down. Typically, it is rolled over into a new bond offering. That means that old promises to return the borrowed money are nullified, and replaced by fresh promises. This cycle seems as if it could continue indefinitely, and certainly it looks like the nation’s fiscal leaders have tried this route. The unfortunate truth is that the situation has continued unchecked for so long now that simple productivity seems unlikely to be able to ever repay the full amount of American debt.

With literally trillions owed – Americans owe the Chinese over 1.2 trillion dollars alone – this is a problem that, like disappearing oil, will require drastic changes to accommodate. Change hurts in most cases, but in this case, it could hurt worse than anyone anticipates. The ultimate solutions could easily bankrupt the country, lead to cataclysmic economic collapse (which would probably look similar, if slightly different), or, depending on one’s viewpoint, look even worse than either of those. Ultimately, Americans might have to sell off land, even entire states, to pay their debts.