Read the National Resource Fund plan →
The plan can lower the debt burden under favorable assumptions. Replacing a fixed debt-growth target with an actual budget produces a much slower decline.
All cases start at 100% debt/GDP. Normalized GDP and debt are $32T each, not current measured balances. The main cases assume 3% real growth and 4% GDP-price inflation.
Subtracting Fund assets creates a partial net-financial-liability measure. It does not change official debt held by the public, value unextracted resources, or measure the entire national balance sheet.
| Scenario | Year 10 | Year 20 | Year 30 | Fund, year 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article target: enforce 2% debt growth | 61.3% | 37.5% | 23.0% | $10.43T |
| Integrated central: primary balance by year 10 | 95.5% | 89.1% | 82.7% | $10.43T |
| Stronger discipline: 1% primary surplus by year 10 | 90.1% | 74.4% | 59.1% | $10.43T |
| No fiscal correction: 2.6% primary deficit | 109.3% | 127.2% | 144.0% | $10.43T |
| Weaker AI: 1.8% real growth | 106.8% | 112.0% | 117.0% | $10.43T |
| Higher financing cost: new yield 8.5% | 107.4% | 119.8% | 134.6% | $10.43T |
| 2% inflation; yields fall with inflation | 102.1% | 96.4% | 89.3% | $10.43T |
| Resource shortfall: $15B annual net receipts | 95.5% | 89.1% | 83.8% | $1.04T |
| Fund financed by borrowing | 98.5% | 93.5% | 87.7% | $10.43T |
| AI gains arrive gradually over 10 years | 100.3% | 93.5% | 86.9% | $10.43T |
| Resource receipts delayed 10 years | 95.5% | 89.1% | 83.4% | $4.74T |
| Finite receipts: contributions stop after year 20 | 95.5% | 89.1% | 82.8% | $8.65T |
| Adverse combination | 128.8% | 178.3% | 244.0% | $0.62T |
| Recession and portfolio crash in years 21–22 | 95.5% | 89.1% | 96.3% | $6.92T |
| Allocation | Debt/GDP | (Debt − Fund)/GDP | Fund |
|---|---|---|---|
| No new receipts | 83.9% | 83.9% | $0.00T |
| Invest receipts in Fund | 82.7% | 78.6% | $10.43T |
| Use receipts to reduce borrowing | 78.9% | 78.9% | $0.00T |
| Borrow to capitalize Fund | 87.7% | 83.6% | $10.43T |
The Fund case has more outstanding debt and a pool of financial assets. Its deterministic advantage over immediate borrowing reduction is only 0.36 percentage points of GDP in net liabilities. Its return must compensate for financing costs, fees and risk.
At year 30, the central Fund holds $10.43T nominal, equivalent to $3.21T in starting-year dollars. A $297B nominal withdrawal in that year buys about $92B at starting-year prices.
With no withdrawals and no fees, the article’s 7% accumulation example reaches $14.17T at year 30. These are different payout policies.
At 4% inflation, a 3% payout and 0.25% annual fee require at least 7.25% gross return to preserve real principal in a smooth year without new contributions.
A 7% return does not meet that threshold. Once contributions stop, real principal slowly declines; volatile returns add risk. The 3% rule here is illustrative, not proven sustainable.
The Fund lowers debt/GDP by about 1.2 points relative to no new receipts by year 30. Its remaining assets add about 4.1 points of GDP to the financial balance sheet. Fiscal policy and the growth–interest-rate relationship drive most of the debt-ratio movement.
The shaded band is a distribution of assumed random draws, not a forecast confidence interval. Long-run growth, inflation, returns, resource receipts and interest costs vary. The same underlying shocks are applied to each policy.
Median year-30 debt/GDP: 83.2%.
5th–95th percentiles: 56.8%–120.5%.
79.6% of these synthetic paths finish below the starting 100%; only 1.6% finish below 50%.
Median year-30 debt/GDP: 120.5%.
5th–95th percentiles: 88.2%–166.4%.
16.7% of these draws finish below the starting ratio. These percentages are conditional sample frequencies, not real-world policy success odds.
In the paired Fund-versus-borrowing-reduction comparison, the Fund has lower net financial liabilities in 43.4% of the synthetic draws. That result depends on the assumed return distribution, fees and yield response. It is not a finding that sovereign funds have a 43.4% chance of working.
No draw reaches below 25% debt/GDP under the primary-balance policy. That does not establish impossibility; the target requires a different fiscal path.
This slice holds growth, inflation and resource assumptions fixed. Lower interest costs and stronger primary balances allow the ratio to fall further. Colors help scanning; the numbers are the results.
| Primary balance by year 10 ↓ / New yield → | 4.0% | 4.5% | 5.0% | 5.5% | 6.0% | 6.5% | 7.0% | 7.5% | 8.0% | 8.5% | 9.0% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -2.6% GDP | 91% | 100% | 109% | 120% | 131% | 144% | 158% | 174% | 192% | 212% | 233% |
| -1.5% GDP | 71% | 79% | 87% | 96% | 107% | 118% | 131% | 145% | 161% | 179% | 199% |
| -1.0% GDP | 62% | 69% | 77% | 86% | 95% | 106% | 118% | 132% | 147% | 164% | 183% |
| -0.5% GDP | 53% | 60% | 67% | 75% | 84% | 94% | 106% | 119% | 133% | 149% | 167% |
| +0.0% GDP | 44% | 50% | 57% | 65% | 73% | 83% | 93% | 106% | 119% | 135% | 152% |
| +0.5% GDP | 35% | 41% | 47% | 54% | 62% | 71% | 81% | 92% | 105% | 120% | 136% |
| +1.0% GDP | 26% | 31% | 37% | 43% | 51% | 59% | 69% | 79% | 91% | 105% | 120% |
| +1.5% GDP | 17% | 22% | 27% | 33% | 40% | 47% | 56% | 66% | 77% | 90% | 105% |
| +2.0% GDP | 8% | 12% | 17% | 22% | 28% | 36% | 44% | 53% | 63% | 75% | 89% |
Positive primary balance is a surplus; negative is a deficit. New-debt yields phase into the effective rate at 20% per year. The grid has no probability weights.
Resource receipts are additional eligible cash after restoration costs and existing obligations. All are invested in the central case; the matching receipt and contribution cancel in the borrowing equation.
Returns grow the Fund. Only actual withdrawals reduce borrowing. The same return is never both spent and reinvested. Borrowing to seed the Fund creates an equal initial liability.
GDP(t) = GDP(t−1) × (1 + real growth) × (1 + price inflation)
Debt(t) = Debt(t−1) + interest − primary surplus − net resource receipts
+ Fund contribution − Fund withdrawal
Fund(t) = Fund(t−1) × (1 + gross return − fee)
+ Fund contribution − Fund withdrawalThe model checks annual consolidated cash-flow identities and reproduces the article’s fixed-debt-growth arithmetic. Those checks establish accounting consistency, not economic feasibility.
Seed 20260927. Long-run real growth: normal, mean 3%, standard deviation 0.5 percentage points. Long-run inflation: mean 4%, same standard deviation. Annual growth and inflation deviations: stationary standard deviations 1.5 and 0.8 points, AR(1) coefficients 0.35 and 0.55. Growth bounded at −8% to 10%, inflation at 0% to 10%.
Gross returns: lognormal, 7% arithmetic mean, 12% log volatility. Receipts: lognormal, $150B arithmetic mean, 35% log volatility. Return innovations load +0.35 on growth and −0.20 on inflation innovations; resource innovations load +0.40 on growth. Financing yields add a 0.5-point independent shock and 1 point per 100 points of debt/GDP above 100%. Primary balance adjusts by 0.4 times the cyclical growth disturbance. All distributions are assumed, not fitted. See the full methodology and code for timing and bounds.
These simulations do not establish mine economics, ecological recovery, tribal or permitting compliance, employment outcomes, AI adoption, fiscal legislation or Fund governance. They do not model detailed Treasury maturities, inflation-indexed spending, exchange rates or commodity concentration. The interest and primary-budget assumptions summarize some fiscal effects; they do not prove them.
CBO’s February 2026 outlook supplies the 2.6% starting primary-deficit reference and the 1.8% weaker-growth comparison. It is a dated projection, not a calibration of this model. Subsequent policy changes are not integrated. The Fed’s objective is 2% PCE inflation; 4% GDP-price inflation here is a distinct scenario.
Primary deficit 2.6% of GDP in 2026; average real growth 1.8% over 2027–2036. Dated federal projections, not calibration of this simulation.
Context for the dated baseline; August 20 tariff update is not incorporated into this normalized exercise.
$14.61B total disbursements; $5.01B to Treasury. Neither is a forecast of new investable revenue.
2% PCE inflation objective; the simulation uses GDP-price inflation and does not presume a policy change.
Six accounting and arithmetic checks passed. Download the complete package, extract it, install NumPy, and run python3 run_simulations.py, then python3 build_report.py from the extracted folder. The interactive charts display precomputed scenarios; changing the selectors does not change the random distributions.
Generated 27 September 2026. Original plan: dutystation.ai/out-of-debt. This analysis tests the original plan’s assumptions; it is not a forecast, investment recommendation or political endorsement.