These are banks, I’m referring to sovereign debt. As a nation state, when you issue sovereign debt, that is a promise to repay that debt in the future. Who will be paying that debt back? Workers generating output that will be taxed in some way, with taxes servicing and retiring future debt obligations. What will there be less of in the future? Workers (structural demographics, total fertility rate rapidly declining globally, etc). The collateral (future worker aggregate productivity) doesn’t exist at the forward curve with the promises to repay in the future, therefore the debt should be rated as higher risk and less likely to be paid back. This would force interest rates higher on issued debt (more risk demands higher yields), but whether the market has an appetite for debt issued with more realistic fundamental expectations remains to be seen.
Sovereign Debts are the Treasury Bonds. There is no chance in hell, it will have a lower rating. The debt will always be paid off, at the cost of higher yields for the future. Its an extremely unpleasant situation but inflation and higher taxes are first in line before even any possibility of Treasuries defaulting.
We think we know the approximate trajectory of future population growth. We might be wrong though.
We definitely don’t know the future trajectory of productivity growth. There might be inflection points that more than compensate for slowing worker growth. This is in fact the basis for investor excitement about clean energy, robotics, artificial intelligence, new health care technologies, etc.
