The Master Plan

First posted at The Smirking Chimp on November 26, 2007

When people go bankrupt, they either "restructure" their debt (meaning they still get to pay most or all of it back, just on longer terms), or they liquidate. In other words, everything but the clothes on your back is sold or confiscated by your creditors.
The US is in way too deep to do a restructuring. We can barely even afford to continue paying interest on our national debt, and it's only a matter of time before Treasury securities start going into default. Time to liquidate.

Alaska is a money pit. Maybe the Russians would buy it back from us for $.05/acre. Maybe they would take it off our hands if we gave them that amount in debt relief (they're the only large country that actually owes us money).
The Chinese need food. Perhaps they would forgive our debt for Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. We might have to throw in Indiana and Illinois as a deal sweetener.
The Japanese love to travel. We could exchange Hawaii and our other Pacific holdings for some debt relief. It probably wouldn't be enough, though. But it would be if we threw in California, Oregon, and Washington. Maybe even Idaho, which has some really nice vacation resorts.
We don't owe Mexico any money, but we could right some old wrongs and solve the illegal immigration problem by ceding Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Texas and Oklahoma back to them.
Since we still have nukes, we could force Spain to take Puerto Rico and Florida back.
The UK could have its original 13 Colonies back, and the EU might be satisfied with the rest of the country, except the Dakotas and Minnesota, which would become the new, smaller, US.
US investors and smaller countries would be left holding the bag, but you usually can't satisfy all of your creditors in a bankruptcy, anyway.
We could sell off most of our military equipment (except the nukes) to start a new national treasury.
It may not be the best plan, but it's a plan. Most bankruptcies are messy.