US Debt & Fiscal Stress
Debt commentary is the most confident and least accountable genre in finance. Everything below carries a number that was fixed before the outcome, a date it must answer by, and a written description of the world in which it is wrong. Nothing here is revised after the fact.
The ledger — hash-sealed, scored in public
CORRECT if FRED series FYGFGDQ188S (federal debt held by the public, % of GDP) prints ≥105 for any quarter, or CBO reports an actual — not projected — fiscal-year figure ≥105%, on or before 2029-12-31. Baseline at sealing: ≈100% of GDP (CBO, 2025); CBO baseline crosses the 1946 record (~106%) in 2029.
Resolves by 2029-12-31. Status: PENDING.
CORRECT if, before 2027-06-30, the S&P 500 daily close never falls 25% or more below its highest daily close recorded after 2026-07-03. One clean threshold, daily closing data only, no interpretation. This entry resolves at the first public scoring in July 2027.
Resolves by 2027-06-30. Status: PENDING.
Live projections
Federal debt passed $37T in 2025, net interest now runs near $1T a year — more than defense — and Moody's stripped the last AAA in May 2025. History offers three exits from this position: grow out (needs 5%+ real growth), inflate away, or restructure; markets usually force the choice via a gilt-crisis-style repricing before politicians volunteer one.
Wrong if: through 2030 the US runs deficits under 4% of GDP for two consecutive years, term premia stay compressed, and no Treasury auction stress episode (tail >4bps with failed dealer absorption) occurs.
Window: 2026-2030.
The longest yield-curve inversion on record (26 months, un-inverted late 2024) sits behind a labor market that lost 911K jobs to a single benchmark revision and a consumer running on $1.2T of card debt at record rates. The danger is not the recession itself but the starting point: entering one with a 6%-of-GDP deficit leaves no fiscal shock absorber.
Wrong if: NBER declares no US recession beginning before end-2028, and unemployment never rises more than one point off its cycle low in that window.
Window: 2026-2028.
US office vacancy crossed 20% for the first time on record (Moody's, 2024) and office CMBS delinquency has pushed past 11% — beyond its 2012 peak — while roughly $1T of CRE debt matures each year through 2027 into doubled rates. Regional banks hold a disproportionate share; 2023 (SVB, Signature, First Republic) was the tremor, not the quake.
Wrong if: office delinquency rates retreat below 8% by 2027 without any additional bank failure or FDIC-assisted merger among the top-100 US banks.
Window: 2026-2028.
Sealed against the grain deliberately: as of July 2026 every major G7 central bank is holding or hiking — the Fed at 3.50-3.75% with a dot plot that flipped toward a hike under its new chair, the ECB fresh off raising its deposit rate to 2.25%, the Bank of England holding 3.75% with two dissents for an increase, the Bank of Japan at 1.0% and climbing toward neutral. A cumulative 100bp of cuts from any of them inside eighteen months therefore requires the cycle to break: a recession, a financial accident, or an energy-price collapse. That is exactly why the claim is informative — it is a clean, market-legible proxy for "the expansion did not survive 2027," priced near the platform's recession odds discounted for the shorter window.
Wrong if: between 2026-07-01 and 2027-12-31 no G7 central bank (Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Bank of Canada) reduces its primary policy rate by a cumulative 100 basis points or more from its July 2026 level, per official policy announcements.
Window: 2026-2027.
Tail scenarios
Global debt hit a record $348 trillion in 2025 — about 305% of world GDP (IIF Global Debt Monitor). Higher-for-longer rates raise rollover costs; when one sovereign loses market access, downgrades and capital flight strike structurally similar economies through contagion. The IMF and World Bank lack the balance sheet to rescue many countries simultaneously.
Other subjects on the record
Every claim above is also listed in the full projection registry and the calibration ledger. Scoring is explained in how a prediction is made.