During a lengthy interview on CNBC the week before last, Donald Trump, fresh from becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, came as close as any major presidential contender ever has to saying that America is not capable of repaying her debts in full, and that our path to economic recovery might involve some pain for our creditors. This moment of candor earned Trump almost as much condemnation as his earlier suggestions to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

To many, the idea that U.S. debt obligations involved even the slightest risks to investors was both the height of financial naiveté and the epitome of political recklessness. The pressure was so great in fact that The Donald, who has consistently refused to engage in even the most sensible strategic retreats, appeared on CNN last Monday to "clarify" his earlier remarks. However, he ignited another firestorm when he inadvertently let slip another unspoken truth, namely, that the United States can always print however much money she needs to "repay" her debt. Apparently the only acceptable position to hold on this issue is to completely deny reality.

Despite his public image as a premiere pitchman, marketeer, and builder of glitzy gold towers, Donald Trump owes his business success to his ability to walk into a roomful of people to whom he owes money and, through the use of threats, bluster, and hardball negotiations, convince them to accept less than what he owes. Time and again he has used competitors' prior lending mistakes as a lever to get what he wants. That's why he has said repeatedly that he is "the king of debt." Evidently he thought that this private experience and common sense could help in the counterintuitive arena of public debt.

Prior to Trump's "clarification," Jordan Weissmann of the online news site Slate stated the case succinctly, "When a country prints its own currency, markets don't typically worry about them running out of money, and thus are willing to lend freely. …The fact that the U.S. controls its own currency does give us flexibility when it comes to debt. If it weren't for our farcical, self-imposed debt ceiling, default would rarely, if ever, be something people seriously discussed." (5/9/16)

It seems to me that Slate was arguing that Trump doesn't really understand that we print our own money at will. There may be a great many things of which Trump is unaware, but he clearly knows where our money comes from. The difference between Trump and his critics is that he must believe there is a cost in printing too much money. Modern economists do not appear to grasp this basic concept.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman went even further. Despite the fact that he has argued that the Federal Reserve should print an unlimited supply of dollars to keep the economy afloat, he believes that the greenbacks themselves will remain precious and coveted forever, as long as reckless demagogues like Trump don't spoil the party. In his column on May 9, entitled "The Making of an Ignoramus" (which responded specifically to Trump's CNBC interview), Krugman said that Trump's default suggestion would, "among other things, deprive the world economy of its most crucial safe asset, U.S. debt, at a time when safe assets are already in short supply."