It's problematic because nearly all of us are exposed to this debt in some way or another. Banks hold it. Pension funds hold it. The social security trust fund holds it.

When you hear that they 'borrowed' from social security, what they did was swap dollars for bonds on the books. Under normal sane circumstances this would have been a prudent move because the bonds earn interest. The problem is when it becomes apparent that the US government can no longer make good on its debt obligation and so these bonds become worthless paper that nobody wants to be holding.

This system works in small doses. But they fucked up. They went way too far. It's already too big of a problem to fix. The rest is only a matter of time now. Everyone is exposed to these bonds so it's going to break everything for a while.

We're at a point where the annual interest is almost a trillion dollars a year. The total personal wealth of all US billionaires is roughly 4.5 trillion. So if you confiscated 100% of the wealth of all US billionaires you could afford to pay just the interest for about 4.5 years and that's assuming it doesn't get any bigger.

This is going to get rough. Your great grandkids will ask you about this time. Buckle up buttercup.