The whole economy is essentially running on one giant credit card. Governments are locked into a debt cycle they cant get out of... nothing ever gets paid back. When the debt comes due they roll it into new debt, and the interest gets paid with more borrowing. One credit card paying off the other. The only real way out is growth. But you cant grow when your population is shrinking. Fewer working people means less growth, so GDP never rises fast enough to catch up with the debt.  So how does the bill get paid? Liquidity. Nobody in the system is allowed to default, so the debt is funded by debasing the currency. This is my Everything Code framework. The debt can't stop, so the debasement can't stop either, and every asset price is downstream of that.