The Debt Bomb Ticking Toward 2033

Is America's national debt a slow-moving crisis hiding in plain sight? In this episode of Through the Noise, Duke finance professor Campbell Harvey breaks down why the U.S. debt is far larger than headlines suggest - closer to $39 trillion once Social Security obligations are counted - and why politicians have little incentive to act before 2033, when the Social Security Trust runs dry. Harvey unpacks Ferguson's Law, the Triffin dilemma, and the alarming fact that 20% of federal tax revenue now goes just to servicing interest on the Federal debt. He weighs the unattractive fixes: raising taxes, inflating the debt away, cutting costs, against the one genuinely promising path forward - productivity-driven growth.