About

Part of my job is staying up to date on the latest news about the US federal government's debt. I'll post the relevant links I come across here, pulling mainly from newspapers and news sites, podcasts and YouTube, official sources, and Twitter.

When following fiscal (and monetary) policy, it quickly becomes clear that there is no consensus about answers to questions such as What's a good amount of debt? How should we think about debt differently in times of crisis vs. prosperity? How important is private vs. public debt? What are the distributional consequences of debt? To say nothing about more fundamental questions like What is debt really?

Most of the preeminent economics commentators learned a rigorous theoretical framework in graduate school or at investment firms, which they then apply to analyzing real world policy questions. The best update their frameworks as the world changes, and my hope is that by collecting many views here, we get a sense for which ones are most relevant today.

In the words of a friend, I am "trying to resolve a debate that no one knows is happening."