The odds that the National Debt WON'T destroy us? “A million to one”, according to Bloomberg Economics.

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[i][b]Photo above[/b] - after IBM's "Deep Blue" computer crushed grandmaster Garry Kasparov in chess, he refused to play it any more. When the computer was renamed "Watson", and crushed Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, it was banned from ever playing Jeopardy again.[/i]

Okay, right off, let's get one thing straight. It was a computer that said we're all gonna die from the national debt. Not a carbon-based life form. But to be fair, people like me HAVE been warning about this also.

Some AI computer run by Bloomberg Economics ran ONE MILLION simulations about our future. A million. It decided that if we keep spending the way we do, and expanding the national debt, it's game over. Link at bottom.

I, for one, take this seriously. Not because AI is always perfect. It isn't. AI is still really bad at things like driving a car, or drawing a human hand with the correct number of fingers. But on numerical predictions, AI crushes it. Remember Deep Blue? An IBM computer, 25 years ago. They taught it to play chess. It could analyze two million moves ahead. It beat grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue took home the grand prize of $700,000. Kasparov earned $400,000 for second place, and refused to ever play Deep Blue again, for any amount of money.

Okay – that was 1997. More than 25 years ago. Before smartphones were invented. When the space shuttle had about as much computing power as your thermostat. So when Deep Bloomberg says we're cruisin' for an economic bruisin', I take it seriously.

Bloomberg's magical black box won't convince everyone, of course. Some people are just out there. This week's hilarious conspiracy theory is that solar eclipse is retribution from God. Because it's casting shade on some high crime cities. This is being reported everywhere on the internet, due to the miraculous ability of AI to plagiarize and republish.

[b]Back to the national debt and inflation. [/b]Speaking of inflation, how much did it cost to run 1 million simulations of congressional overspending? The electricity bill must have been mind blowing. Globally, AI already uses as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan. I think Bitcoin mining is the runner up for eye popping electric bills. Congress is probably somewhere in the top 10.

A human projection of the national debt, published in this column a few days ago (with links), showed the amount America owes ballooning from $34 trillion to $141 trillion in just 25 years. It's going up $1 trillion every 90 days. Even more tellingly, simulations do NOT show us winning the “war on inflation” with higher Fed Funds rates. That's because creating fake money (treasury bills) to cover government overspending is – itself – inflationary. Interest rates can never cure congressional irresponsibility.

Think about that for a moment. Everybody knows someone who drowned in debt, and had to file bankruptcy. And each of those people had MASSIVE increases in credit card interest rates before they finally went bankrupt. Higher interest rates have nothing to do with overspending. Just ask your bankrupt friend. Now ask congress to stop spending on stuff we don't need and can't afford.

I'm just sayin' . . .

[b][u]A Million Simulations, One Verdict for US Economy: Debt Danger Ahead (yahoo.com)[/u][/b]