Debt burdens have grown so large — in part because of the cost of the pandemic — that they now pose a growing threat to living standards even in rich economies, including the United States.
Yet, in a year of elections around the world, politicians are largely ignoring the problem, unwilling to level with voters about the tax increases and spending cuts needed to tackle the deluge of borrowing. In some cases, they're even making profligate promises that could at the very least jack up inflation again and could even trigger a new financial crisis.
The International Monetary Fund last week reiterated its warning that "chronic fiscal deficits" in the US must be "urgently addressed." Investors have long shared that disquiet about the long-term trajectory of the US government's finances.
Debt is "not free anymore," he told CNN.
"In the 2010s, a lot of academics, policymakers and central bankers came to the view that interest rates were just going to be near zero forever and then they started thinking debt was a free lunch," he said.
"That was always wrong-headed because you can think of government debt as holding a flexible-rate mortgage and, if the interest rates go up sharply, your interest payments go up a lot. And that's exactly what's happened all over the world."
'Conspiracy of silence'
In the United States, the federal government will spend $892 billion in the current fiscal year on interest payments — more than it has earmarked for defense and approaching the budget for Medicare, health insurance for older people and those with disabilities.
Next year, interest payments will top $1 trillion on national debt of more than $30 trillion, itself a sum roughly equal to the size of the US economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress's fiscal watchdog.
The CBO sees US debt reaching 122% of GDP a mere 10 years from now. And in 2054, debt is forecast to hit 166% of GDP, slowing economic growth.
So how much debt is too much? Economists don't think there is a "predetermined level at which bad things happen in markets," but most reckon that if debt hits 150% or 180% of gross domestic product, that means "very serious costs for the economy and society more broadly," said Dynan.
The world is sitting on a $91 trillion problem. 'Hard choices' are coming | CNN Business
Tax revenue is a record at about 4.5 trillion the federal budget in 2019 was 4.6, it is now about 6.3. If we had the same spending as 2019 we'd have a balanced budget. We have a spending g problem
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