A Chainsaw Murderer Lurking in an Abandoned Toolshed

Nine trillion, one hundred ninety-one billion, one hundred thirty-five million… ah never mind. I don’t feel like typing out the rest.

What I’m getting at is a very large number that defines the amount of US debt that matures this year. Nearly $9.2 trillion—about 25% of all the debt America owes.

It is the largest quantity of maturing debt until the 2050s. No other year comes close. The next three years combined are about $8 trillion. So, $9.2 is big.

And looming.

It’s like a chainsaw murderer lurking in an abandoned toolshed… and we’re a bunch of college co-eds out camping in the woods for a weekend of frolicking, none the wiser that death stalks us.

And therein lies a problem, for which the solution is going to be pain for American families. And I think I feel safe here using the word “guaranteed.”

Because we are guaranteed to have a recession in America.

Probably more than just a hiccup recession. A meaningful recession.

This won’t be a COVID recession, where unemployment spiked into the mid-teens.

But it’s not going to be some borderline recession either.

See, the thing about this $9.2 trillion in debt—and you obviously know this—is that it carries an interest rate. Debt wants to be paid.

Well, in truth, debt demands that it be paid… or else chainsaws start up.

The people who run the government know this too.

They know that if today’s quo remains status, then Uncle Sam will soon find himself trying to flee the chainsaw, unsuccessfully.

At the most recent US Treasury auction, a one-year Treasury bill demanded an interest rate of 4.05%. Going back to 2010, the average interest rate on one-year paper is 2.98%.

The same trend is afoot across the entire spectrum of US debt—10 years, 20 years, 30 years. All are well above 4% and some are pushing toward 5%. And all of those rates are well above historical numbers over the last 5, 10, and 15 years.

In other words, one of the big reasons America’s already-extreme debt is growing so quickly, and why annual debt-servicing payments now exceed $1 trillion annually (about 15% of the federal budget) is because the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates so high in the post-pandemic period.

Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. And they’re ornery and angry and threatening to make a mess of this particular chicken coop—i.e. America’s economy.

If Uncle Sam has to roll over $9.2 trillion at today’s interest rates… well, that’s gonna leave an ugly mark.

Interest payments are going to spike. The bond market is going to freak. The dollar is going to dive. Stocks are going to tank. And a financial crisis will ultimately engulf the US because no country can continually accumulate more and more and more debt… which is exactly what would happen… because the US would have to issue more and more debt to make those higher and higher interest payments.

So, how to sidetrack this unnerving yet unavoidable reality?

Instigate a nasty recession.

Undermine the economy any way you can.

Fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers, which will lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of ancillary private-sector jobs and the bankruptcies of small-businesses that support the government in innumerable ways.

Start a trade war with every friend and foe so that your economy collapses, and so that economic retaliation from affected countries slams your farmers, your energy-production companies, and your exporters, and makes life more expensive for your citizens, even as they lose their job.

And arrange for all of that because you know that the Federal Reserve will have to step in and throw a life-preserver to the economy that you purposefully pushed over the railing.

That, dear reader, is how the dots are connecting for the remainder of 2025.

What we’re talking about is premeditated “econocide”—the purposeful intent to kill the economy in order to force interest rates down.

Now, please do not read that as some kind of attack on Prez 47. Yes, he is the agent of change. He’s the one imposing what seems like nonsensical tariffs on America’s most important trading partners, and his pet rock—Elon Musk—is the hatchet man Trump has hired to gut the federal government.

But I don’t give Trump credit for all of this. Bigger chainsaw murderers are pulling the start cord behind the scenes. I have no clue who they are—the Deep State is much deeper than any of us can imagine.

Whoever they are, they are clearly Field Notes readers (right?) because I’ve been writing about this problem for years—the issue that America’s debt was going to reach a point where interest payments alone would begin to overwhelm the country’s ability to function.

If you’ve ever seen the very early ’80s movie Body Heat with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, you might recall the opening scene in which William Hurt’s character watches a huge conflagration in the distance light up the South Florida night. As a young woman emerges from the shower, she comments on the flames having grown larger, to which Hurt responds: “The Seawater Inn. My family used to eat dinner there 25 years ago. Now somebody’s torched it to clear the lot.”

That is precisely what I’m getting at here.

Someone—more likely several someones—are torching the US economy to, metaphorically, clear the lot.

I’m telling you this just to prepare you for the recession ahead.

For many American families, this is going to be painful. Joblessness, bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions. All will rise.

But in the bad-news-is-good-news world of financial markets, the recession will bring down interest rates and home prices.

Stocks, bonds, and crypto will rally.

The dollar will not. Which means now’s a good time to be grabbing foreign assets, be that European, Canadian, and Asian stocks; currencies such as the Swiss franc and euro; or maybe rental real estate you’ve been considering.

Ultimately, this is the first taste of a far more bitter pill America will have to swallow later this decade.

But we will get this one down. And those who prep for it—owning gold, certain stocks, certain crypto, and certain foreign assets—will roll this recession just fine.

What comes next, though… well, that’s a different dispatch.

More to come soon…