Goldman CEO David Solomon warns ‘there will be a reckoning’ around the $38 trillion national debt

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has issued a stark warning regarding the soaring U.S. national debt, stating that if the current fiscal path continues without a significant increase in economic expansion, “there will be a reckoning on this.”

Speaking on The David Rubenstein Show with the private-equity billionaire of the same name, Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein asked the investment bank chief about the current national debt level, which stands at a whopping $38 trillion. “Some people would say that’s a lot,” Rubenstein said.

Solomon said people he talks to are worried about not just the debt, but how it’s “accelerated” over the last five years, “and it doesn’t seem like we have the ability to pull it back.” He argued that aggressive fiscal stimulus has become “kind of embedded” in how democratic economies operate. The debt has ballooned significantly since the financial crisis, he noted, and federal figures do show it increasing from roughly $10 trillion in 2008 to its current level, over three times as large.

The debt has accelerated at an even faster rate throughout 2025, with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation calculating that the growth from $37 trillion to $38 trillion was the fastest rate of growth outside the pandemic. “Adding trillion after trillion to the debt and budgeting-by-crisis is no way for a great nation like America to run its finances,” the nonpartisan watchdog’s CEO Michael Petersen said in a statement provided to Fortune on October 22, minutes after the Treasury confirmed the breach of the new benchmark.

Solomon told Rubenstein that if the government continues refinancing its debt at current rates, the total is projected to swell further, growing “into the low forties, you know, for sure.”

The path to averting crisis: growth, not revenue

Solomon stressed the solution to this monumental debt load does not lie primarily in tax hikes or new revenue streams. What he called “the revenue path” out of this problem isn’t as viable in his opinion as “the growth path.” He emphasized that increasing the U.S. growth trajectory is essential, noting the “monstrous” difference between compounded growth of 3% versus the current trend growth of 2% in terms of debt management.

The Goldman Sachs CEO expressed some optimism regarding the potential for higher growth, pointing to tailwinds such as embedding technology into the enterprise. This technological acceleration provides a “productivity opportunity” that could lead to a better growth trajectory. He also cited the ongoing infrastructure investment boom, noting that six or seven large companies are projected to spend $350 billion this year alone on infrastructure, which will positively affect growth. Furthermore, recent shifts in regulatory policy—moving toward a “systematic look at regulation” and focusing only on what is “really necessary and works as effective”—also serve as a tailwind for economic growth.

Solomon has been bullish on artificial intelligence throughout 2025, while hedging his bets on whether some portion of the stock market is in a bubble. In early October, speaking at a conference in Turin where Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also discussed AI’s bubble potential, Solomon said he’s “not smart enough” to know exactly what is and isn’t a bubble in stocks, but “it’s not different this time … There will be a lot of capital that was deployed that didn’t deliver returns,” he said, adding nobody knows how it will play out.

Near-term economy and political instability

Despite the long-term debt concerns, Solomon offered a relatively positive assessment of the current short-term economic health. He said the economy is “in pretty good shape at the moment,” viewing the existing headwinds and tailwinds as favoring growth. Consequently, he said he believed the “chance of a recession in the near term is low.”

Regarding general policy uncertainty, Solomon maintained that unpredictability is a constant across different administrations. The role of business leaders, he argued, is simply “to adapt and to adjust and and deal with it can’t avoid” the changing policies. He stressed the critical nature of key financial stability mechanisms, including the independence of the Federal Reserve, noting central bank independence has “served us very, very well” globally.

Solomon is far from alone in business leaders in decrying the national reliance on debt. Billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater, has even developed a proprietary scheme to analyze cycles of finance throughout world history. In July, Dalio warned that if it keeps growing, at some point it will trigger an “economic heart attack,” a phrase he has repeated for several years. (He also likens the debt problem to “plaque” building up, returning to the medical metaphors.)

Some top executives see the tendency to put off today what you could pay for tomorrow creeping into other sectors of the economy. Beazer Homes CEO Allan Merrill voiced frustration at the residential real-estate conference ResiDay, saying, “we want things that we don’t want to pay for right now, we’re going to let someone else in the future pay for them.” Merrill was citing the difficulty for his homebuilding business of breaking ground in certain jurisdictions, as he pays in the region of $140,000 just to pull permits in Northern California. “I think we’ve been irresponsible,” Merrill said of the national attitude.

Ultimately, Solomon told Rubenstein, the nation must continue to find people to “buy and finance our debt.” He cautioned that if the debt keeps growing, “ultimately it’s not going to be other people around the world” who will need to figure out America’s fiscal situation. “If it keeps growing, it’s going to turn to us.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com