Easy for you to say, until you realize that every debt is someone else's asset, and if you hold any Treasury bills/bonds, bond funds, or money market accounts/funds, it's probably <i>your</i> asset.  Phrased as "should the American public have to pay back the $12T that the government owes?", the answer is "Of course not!"  Phrased as "should the American public lose all the money they put in Treasury bonds and money market accounts because they didn't trust the stock market?", the answer is "Of course not!"  But those are two sides of the same default...