Ron Paul’s Debtpocalypse Idea: So Crazy It Just Might Work (blogs.wsj.com)

There's a lot more than just 1.6 trillion which is really just one arm of the sprawling US bureaucracy "owing" it to another criminal segment.

This idea of repudiating the national debt is 30+ years old: http://mises.org/daily/1423

Note the history of states doing it in the story and keep in mind that states used to have more power than today.