Joe Biden says the United States has never defaulted on its debts, that’s wrong it has

by Aegidius25

Here are some examples, I won’t go into long explanations but you can look up the details for yourself.

1. During the Revolutionary War promissory notes that never got paid off were turned into fiat money by the general public who used them until 1781-2 when they became worthless. The US had to depend on a bailout from the King of France to pay some of its bills. Other bonds went unpaid until c. 1792 when they were transformed from debt into equity in the really insolvent First Bank of the United States.
2. In the late 1830’s and ’40’s many state governments, especially in the South, defaulted on their debts in a major deflationary depression after having taken out huge loans for road and canal construction in the early 1830s when there was a huge land bubble.
3. In the 1870s in another deflationary depression the US defaulted on “greenbacks” which were originally created by Lincoln as fiat money to stimulate the Northern economy in the Civil War. Supposedly redeemable in gold on demand they actually were not, and were then transformed into bonds in 1863/4. Payments on these bonds ceased in 1873 and did not resume until 1879.
4. In the 1930’s various states and local governments in the North and South defaulted on their debts including about 20% of all local governments.