Would the US government have done better to invest a trillion dollars in the stock market?

[MrBojangles]

My understand is that they invested 1 trillion dollars in green engery companies.

Those went belly up and the Chinese Govt bought up all the left overs at bargain basement prices.
They were bought up by Chinese competition.


So I was just curious if the USA would have done better if they just took a trillion dollars and put it in Twitter or Facebook.


They would have doubled their money and could have paid back some of the debt with it.

[Whiskey Richard]

If ANYONE "invested a trillion dollars in Twitter or Facebook" the market for both would come to a complete halt...

They wouldn't have "doubled their money" at all...

Twitter has a Market cap that is a third of that, and Facebook has a Market cap of an eighth of that...

ALSO you clearly misunderstand the nature of "the debt"....it is BOND obligations due to be paid out over the next 10, 20, or 30 years....not something the US can just "choose to pay off tomorrow"...

People who own US Treasury Bonds BOUGHT those Bonds as a future income stream, and they be pretty pissed-off if you just "gave them their principle back", LOL!

Turn OFF the Fox News and read a book, dammit! Learn something!

[Calvin]

That's a bit like asking if you should mortgage your house and buy stocks with the money. Every last dime the government has comes from somewhere else, and it's borrowing a ginormous amount of it right now.

"Investing" it would just distort the market.