During fiscal year 2023, the US government borrowed $2.7 trillion. This was about ten percent of GDP. (It is worth noting this is not the reported deficit. Some of you sadly still believe the lies.) This year will see an acceleration, resulting from a number of things but notably a significant steepening of the first derivative of interest expense. When we hit a recession, let's say we see deficits north of $4 trillion, but probably higher or about 20% of gdp. We will hit your 250% number pretty quickly at that rate.
The federal government borrowed 43 cents of every dollar it spent LAST YEAR. That will only go up moving forward. If the federal government starts to cut trillions on its spending (it has to), it will induce a recession from which we will require decades to recover.
At some point, these facts will receive mainstream attention and it will be like Enron. Everybody LOVED Enron, until they didn't. I don't think "collapse" is the scenario, nobody wants that, and the plunge protection team will prevent it. However, all that money we borrowed (accelerating future spending into the present) has to be paid, and the public will pay it through massive and unrelenting (but "transitory" LOL) inflation and lower standards of living. I think an "accident" is more likely than collapse. Banks going down one after another. Major companies going bankrupt. Major government programs getting eliminated. I mean, how do you think we get to balance when we need to cut half of federal spending? Devaluation of the currency. Finance becomes musical chairs.
After the supply chain problems resolved, we did not see a reversion to lower prices. Most likely that was due to the massive increase in money supply, and that supply is only getting blown up even more at an accelerating rate. We are now in the steep part of the exponential interest expense, the one that human minds don't readily comprehend.
I've never made a prediction of when, but I will now. It will start within five years. Gird your fucking loins, because we haven't seen anything like this before. Take the existing social chaos and multiply it by massive unemployment and rampant stagflation and let's see what we get. We fucked around, now we will find out.