Budget expert: U.S. “is the boyfriend at the beginning of the Hallmark movie”

Yale Budget Lab Executive Director Martha Gimbel on Wednesday said the U.S. was approaching a debt crisis, as the country's growing deficit makes purchasing American debt less appealing to markets.

"We are currently the boyfriend at the beginning of the Hallmark movie in the big city, where the girlfriend is still going out with him even though she knows that it's wrong," she said. "At some point, she's going to go home to the small town, and find the nice firefighter, and realize that there's another option."

The budget researcher stressed that the timeline for such a scenario — in which investors abandon American debt in favor of more reliable investments — was unclear, but said American debt was currently benefiting from a lack of alternatives.

"The more we make ourselves less attractive to markets, the more likely it is that you will have a fiscal crisis," Ms. Gimbel said. "We are literally relying on the fact that markets have no place to go."

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