While this view has many adherents among respectable people in Washington, reality refuses to cooperate. Instead of skyrocketing, the interest rate on U.S. government debt has plummeted. The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is less than 2 percent, a sharp contrast from the days of budget surpluses in the late 1990s, when it hovered in the 5- to 6-percent range. In short, the deficit hawks have been shown to be completely wrong.
But there is actually another way in which the United States could be like Greece, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is directly connected...
This deal is not only important for the countries it includes but intended to be a pact that other countries will later join. The Obama administration decided not to include any language on currency values in the TPP. This will make it more difficult for the United States to take measures to get countries to stop propping up the dollar.
The result could be the persistence long into the future of large U.S. trade deficits, with the resulting loss of demand and millions of jobs. This drag on growth may not give us the same sort of cataclysmic downturn that Greece has seen, but it is a much more real concern than the possibility that no one will buy U.S. government debt.