This paper explores a natural connection between fiscal multipliers and foreign holdings of public debt. Although fiscal expansions can raise domestic economic activity through various channels, they can also have crowding-out effects if the resources used to acquire public debt reduce domestic...

This article explores the challenges posed by the rising US national debt and government budget deficits. Using a combination of literature review and statistical analysis, the article examines the factors contributing to the national debt and the potential consequences of unsustainable...

This chapter adopts the working assumption that it is conceivable that at some time in the future it would be in the interest of the United States to restructure its sovereign debt (i.e., to reduce the principal amount). It addresses in particular U.S. Treasury Securities. The chapter first...

In the second half of 1953 the United States, for the first time, risked exceeding the statutory limit on Treasury debt. This paper describes how Congress, the White House, and Treasury officials dealt with the looming crisis - by deferring and reducing expenditures, monetizing "free" gold that...

In 2001, the U.S. gross public debt was about $6 trillion; a decade later it was $14 trillion; by the end of 2012 it exceeded $16 trillion. A large part of that increase was absorbed by foreign holders, especially central banks in China and Japan. With the U.S. government gross debt ratio now in...

The United States faces two economic challenges: slow growth and an ever-increasing ratio of debt to GDP. Many policymakers believe they face a dilemma because the policy solutions to the two problems are opposite. To address the slow recovery, standard — Keynesian — economics suggests...

We develop a debt-to-GDP forecasting framework incorporating the classical debt accounting relationship relating the debt-to-GDP ratio to its previous period value, the growth rate of the economy, the government cost of debt service, and the primary balance. We present a linearization of the...

From 1865 to 1870, a crisis atmosphere hovered around the issue of the massive public debt created during the recently concluded Civil War, leading, in part, to the passage of a Constitutional Amendment ensuring the “validity of the public debt.” However, the Civil War debt crisis was not a...

The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951....