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Aha. I missed this, from @FTAlphaville, on the deficit scolds panicking over Olivier Blanchard's quite reasonable piece about debt 1/ ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/01/30/154… 
Here was my writeup. Blanchard didn't say debt was good, or completely risk free, but he did say that fears were overblown and that if there are good reasons to run up debt, we should 2/ nytimes.com/2019/01/09/opi…
But if I may say: I think @FTAlphaville is a bit naive about the motives of the scolds. They suggest that it's about fear of politicians running amok; there's some of that. But also, in practice debt scares serve a political agenda 3/
As Simon Wren-Lewis says, there has been a strong element of what he calls "deficit deceit", using debt concerns to push for a smaller state 4/ bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/…
As in so much, Howard Schultz is a sort of caricature version of the logic: our debt is the biggest problem we face, so we must cut Social Security -- but not, of course, raise taxes on the rich, oh no 5/
Not everyone pushing debt panic is a hypocrite. But there's a strong element of hypocrisy to the whole venture fin/
