The United States is facing a “death spiral” due to the continuous growth of the national debt and the inability of politicians to put an end to the situation, warned Nassim Taleb, one of the economists who predicted the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, reports Business. Insider.

The comments by Taleb, who is also known for his book Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, came as the US federal government’s national debt exceeded $34 trillion for the first time earlier this year.

Taleb warned at an event this week hosted by Universa Investments, the investment fund of which he is the chief financial officer (“chief scientific officer”), that increasing the national debt could have catastrophic consequences for the American economy if Congress agrees to rapid growth. federal debt.

“As long as Congress keeps extending the debt limit and making deals because they’re afraid of the consequences of making the right decision, because that’s the political fabric of the political system, you’re going to end up with a death spiral,” he said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

Nassim Taleb says rising US debt is a ‘white swan’

Asked how the economic shock would play out, he said it would take something “outside or maybe some kind of miracle” to break out of that spiral, and that the overall situation made him more pessimistic about the political system in the West.

In this sense, he showed that the increase in the US national debt is actually a “white swan”, a dangerous event that can be easily predicted, as opposed to a “black swan”, a term used to describe an unpredictable situation with profound consequences. .

Other economists have also tried to sound the alarm about the rising U.S. national debt, expressing concern not so much about the level of the debt but the fact that it continues to rise as the Federal Reserve System (Fed), Washington’s central bank, boosted benchmark interest rates to 5.25 -5.5% to keep inflation under control.

Thus, base interest rates, which reflect the cost of borrowing, reached their highest level in the US since 2001. This means that the US pays higher interest on the bonds it issues to finance the government, and that the cost of servicing the national debt (“debt service”) has also increased.

Taleb also said that while experts warned of the situation before it became a serious problem, the increase in the federal government’s national debt makes the US economy more vulnerable to shocks than it has been in recent years.