The gamble of trying to inflate away debt
The Indicator from Planet Money

The gamble of trying to inflate away debt

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 20, 20268 min
  • Business & money

The United States national debt is running at more than $40 trillion dollars. It’s a potential crisis in the making, but President Donald Trump suggested it can all be solved just by inflating the debt away. Today, we dig into the nitty gritty on how and when inflating the national debt could work. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez. Your Next Listen –Is the federal debt REALLY that bad? –Over 2,000 episodes in our archive on the NPR App Connect with The Indicator from Planet Money –The Indicator newsletter — a weekly roundup of news, ideas...

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Sentence 9 of 12 · 0:33

A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

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You are sounding positively presidential, Patty.

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A1 31%A2 35%B1 18%B2 15%C1 1%
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  • 71 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

NPR. This is the Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Weyland Wong. And I'm Patty Hirsch. And today we're here to talk about the national debt. A debt that right now is running at more than $40 trillion.

0:18

That's more than $100,000 per person in the U.S. It's a potential crisis in the making. But don't worry, because I have a plan. A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

0:33

My plan is to erode the national debt with inflation. You are sounding positively presidential, Patty. I'll take it. Because this is, of course, an idea espoused recently by none other than President Trump.

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