Elon Musk Warns US Will Face ‘Day Of Reckoning’ For Its Debt With ‘No Way’ To Fix Issue

Elon Musk Warns US Will Face ‘Day Of Reckoning’ For Its Debt With ‘No Way’ To Fix Issue

 How To Shockproof Your Nest Egg

Jing Pan   Wed, November 5, 2025   Moneywise

America’s ballooning debt burden has become impossible to ignore — and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who took a stab at tackling government waste earlier this year, is sounding the alarm again.

On a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Musk outlined what he believes is — and isn’t — possible when it comes to fixing the U.S. national debt crisis.  “You can make it directionally better, but ultimately you can't fully fix the system,” Musk said. “Unless you could go super draconian — like Genghis Khan level on cutting waste and fraud — which you can't really do in an aspirationally democratic country, then there's no way to solve the debt crisis.” (1)

Musk called the debt “insane” — and the numbers support his concern. U.S. federal debt has now surpassed $38 trillion and continues to climb.

But what really set off alarm bells for Musk wasn’t just the total — it was the cost of servicing it.

“The interest payments on the debt exceed our entire military budget … that was one of the wake up calls for me … this is crazy,” he said.

He’s not wrong. Treasury data shows the U.S. government spent $970 billion on net interest in fiscal year-to-date 2025 — more than the $917 billion spent on national defense.

Musk’s conclusion? Spending cuts alone won’t solve it.

“Even if you implement all these savings, you're only delaying the day of reckoning for when America goes bankrupt,” he said. “So I came to the conclusion that the only way to get us out of the debt crisis and to prevent America from going bankrupt is AI and robotics. We need to grow the economy at a rate that allows us to pay off our debt.”

Musk isn’t the only one sounding alarms over America’s debt — or, more specifically, the soaring interest costs tied to it. Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, has warned that the U.S. is heading toward a “debt death spiral,” where the government  must borrow simply to pay interest — a vicious cycle that feeds on itself.

But unlike Musk, Dalio doesn’t foresee a formal bankruptcy.

“There won't be a default — the central bank will come in and we'll print the money and buy it,” he said. “And that's where there's the depreciation of money.”

In other words, the government may never technically run out of dollars — but those dollars can lose value fast.

As the hosts of the “Words & Numbers” podcast put it: “Technically speaking, the government can’t go bankrupt because it only promised to hand over a certain number of dollars; it didn’t promise what the value of those dollars would be. (2)

Because the value of the dollars was never specified, the government can print enough to render the dollars nearly worthless. To the rest of us, the effect is the same as the government going bankrupt.”

Many economists share that concern: high debt levels can fuel inflation, eroding the dollar’s purchasing power — something Americans are already experiencing. (3) According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, $100 in 2025 has the same buying power as $12.05 did in 1970. (4)

The good news? Savvy investors have long found ways to protect their wealth — regardless of Washington’s fiscal missteps.

A safe-haven shines again

To shock-proof your investments, Dalio emphasized the value of diversification — and highlighted one time-tested asset in particular.

“People don't have, typically, an adequate amount of gold in their portfolio,” he said. “When bad times come, gold is a very effective diversifier.”

Gold is considered a go-to safe haven. It can’t be printed out of thin air like fiat money and because it’s not tied to any single country, currency or economy, investors flock to it during periods of economic turmoil or geopolitical uncertainty, driving up its value.

Dalio noted that central banks themselves are “acquiring gold now as a diversifier” — and says it’s “prudent” for individuals to consider allocating “somewhere between 10% or 15%” of their portfolios to the precious metal.

TO READ MORE:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/elon-musk-warns-us-face-124300387.html