Donald Trump: "I love the inflation". What if this isn't quite as crazy as it sounds (while still being really darned scary).

$100 when this bond was issued had the spending power of $1,892.16 today.

How did the U.S. pay off much of the debt from the Second World War and the Cold War?

It inflated the economy out of it.

Let me note something here right from the onset.  I think Donald Trump is suffering from dementia in a major way and doesn't come up with plans for anything on his own, very often.  Put another way, I think he's a puppet at this stage, pulled by National Conservative and Populist strings, the two not being the same.

Which brings me to this.  

What if, behind the scenes, somebody on the NatCon end has come up with the plan to inflate the economy and steal as much of the petroleum oil belonging to Venezuela and Iran as possible.

It'd be way sinister, and evil, and destroy the lives and savings of many, but it might work.

But it'll be devastating to individuals.

Here's how it might works.

Raise tariffs to the point where domestic production actually is increased.  That would make everything much more expensive, and hence inflation would result.  Putting US oil increasingly on the global market would do the same, as that only happens when the price of oil is high.  The value of the debt would decrease as the value of money would decrease.

Crazy?

Well, that's similar to what was done with the World War Two and Cold War debt.

The problem is, of course, that living in inflationary times is devastating to individuals, which is why it can't be, and never has been, done openly.

NatCons, however, may very well like this idea, if they can pull it off.  At the end of it the thesis would be that government spending would be brought under control, the national debt greatly reduced, and domestic production realty increased.  All of which would be for those who economically survived the ten to twenty year period it'd take to pull it off.

Which many would not.

And it might not work at all.  Indeed, it would only work if it was accompanied by high employment, which often high inflation operates against. That's why the increased domestic production would be necessary.

NatCons are a really different group and they've operated in this administration very much in the shadows, which doesn't mean they aren't operating.