Many of these statements are exactly what many academic Economists are thinking themselves. With the first spending bill we were worried about deflation as people delay purchases and prices spiral downward, causing only more delayed purchases as people anticipate lower prices, causing job losses, which again causes delayed purchases now that people don't have expendable income. As you can see, it's a nasty downward spiral. Our situation ought to be more likened to the Japanese recession throughout the entire decade of the '90s than Zimbabwe. The Japanese refused to do government spending fearing inflation, yet this ended up being one of the main reasons they finally got out of their deflationary spiral.
And also, the countries who own our debt aren't looking for monetary payments. That's not how it works, it's not like the American government is like "uh yeah, we'll give you some money." It's about production capability. By owning our debt, they own our products we produce when they choose to purchase them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, as we get their cheaper products (seriously imagine the market devoid of Chinese goods) and they will get our products they want that we can produce cheaper/more effectively. The silver lining there is that means they will keep Americans employed.
Look, obviously, we're not in a great economic state at all. But I really think the fallout from all of this will be a lot of learned lessons and better policy in the long run. Look how much we learned from the Great Depression. I'm not a supporter necessarily of where the money is going, but it seems like there is a lot of confusion about how foreign debt and inflation works. Another thing to keep in mind is the government often "monetizes" the debt on purpose (sometimes up to 12% a year or more)... the basic theory is that if you inflate money, the debt effectively is worth less and then is easier to pay off. Obviously there are pluses and minuses to it, but, yes we do it.
