I did a talk in the excellent @MarkusEconomist Academy series yesterday on “Do Debt and Deficits Matter Anymore.” You can watch the video, see the slides, or read this longish thread for a summary.


dropbox.com/s/lb2btgbadotw…
Short version my points:

1. Don’t worry re debt in current emergency. But do ask whether scarce resources meet a cost-benefit test.

2. Best metric is real net interest/GDP, look ahead ~one decade

3. Target 1% of GDP in real net interest/GDP, which is 150-200% of GDP in debt
Before getting to my points some context. Macro policy in 2018-19 was extraordinary, more like the response to a moderate to severe recession. That this was needed to generate reasonable growth is due to long-term decline in interest rates.
Long-term decline in rates should change how we think about fiscal issues. Many of the traditional arguments for debt concern are less operative now (& may not have been operative before). If worried about low rates causing financial instability that is an argument for more debt.
We don’t need to worry about debt in the immediate response. This doesn’t mean do anything, it means figure out top-down the right macro size or do a bottom-up calculation of cost-benefit for the allocation of scarce resources.
There is broad agreement among economists and policymakers that *now* is not the time to worry about debt. There is less agreement about *when*, if ever, to worry. Fair to say many economists getting less worried but still no agreement.
MMT and extreme fiscal hawks provide two views. One de facto says never worry and the other says always worry (I say de facto because MMT constantly offers various exceptions but then downplays them in policy advice). These are like stopped clocks, right twice a day.
We all are very used to looking at debt/GDP as a fiscal metric, I’ve looked at it myself and shown it thousands of times. But that doesn’t make it right, and it suffers from several severe defects that make it misleading as a primary guide to fiscal space and the fiscal situation
Issue 1: Debt is a stock (a total you have at one time) and GDP is a flow (the total over a period of time). Better to compare stocks to stocks (or flows to flows). Not hard to pay off $20T of debt when US GDP totals about $4 quadrillion going forward.
Issue 2: Interest rates have fallen. As a result, while the debt is rising over the next several years interest payments on the debt are actually falling (in nominal dollars).
Issue 3: Debt is backward looking, it is the total cumulative deficits from 1789 to the present (give or take). Doesn’t reflect what is happening in the future.
Issues #1 and #2 can be solved by shifting to focus on interest/GDP as a metric. This shows debt currently very manageable. In fact, a better metric is real interest/GDP which subtracts the portion of the debt that is inflated away. Even more affordable.
Issue #3 says be forward looking. One way to do that is the fiscal gap. But an issue is that forecasts of the future are very uncertain. 30 years ago we thought debt/GDP would be nearly 200% in 2020. Better not to make large policy changes today based on a very uncertain future.
My own preference is to look at real net interest/GDP but project forward something like 10 years. This is a bit arbitrary but a way of saying emphasize what we have a tiny bit more clarity about and disregard what we have much less clarity about.
Finally, should we have a fiscal target and if so, what should it be? For this we need a view on g - r. About two thirds of the last 150 years it has been positive, meaning you can run a primary deficit (deficit excluding interest) and still have stable debt.
But g > r does not give unlimited license, still a specific primary deficit compatible with a specific debt goal. This gives a range of them and also shows the associated net interest assuming g - r = 1.5, about what CBO expects for 2030.
Translating this into specific policy we need to have some combination of: optimal, understandable and achievable.

Some policies do well on some dimensions but badly on others (e.g., balanced budget is understandable but bad policy and not achievable).
Tentative proposal is goal of real net interest 1% percent of GDP. Based on current projections could:

1. Emergency spending unpaid for, broad defn
2. Permanent spending paid for, with broad exceptions
3. Tax cuts expire in 2025
4. Reform Social Security (ideally w/ revenues)
To give a sense of what this would mean, higher debt than the current baseline through about 2035 but then leveling off around 150% of GDP. Real net interest stabilizing around 1% of GDP. But, again, would mostly focus on the next decade, forecasts have massive errors after that.
Thanks for putting up with this long thread, maybe it would have been even shorter to watch the talk itself. You can do so here.

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More from @jasonfurman

14 Nov
We are 10m jobs short, virus is spreading, millions are a weeks away from losing benefits, we should not wait any longer to act. The idea that we can get a better deal if we delay until February is both wishful thinking and ignores the suffering now. nytimes.com/2020/11/14/bus…
No legislation signed after 1/20/2021 can help anyone in November or December of 2020 or even much of January 2021.

Also means schools get nothing now etc.

So delaying until next year by definition can’t get more for people when they most need it.
If your goal is to get more for people in Feb/Mar/Apr/etc. next year also have more leverage now: (1) McConnell more reluctant to give Biden a win; (2) vaccine distn will strengthen hand of arguing to just wait and (3) pressure of GA won’t motivate McConnell.
Read 5 tweets
12 Nov
My guess is my corner of twitter agrees with the substance of my latest @WSJopinion arguing for more stimulus/relief. So let me flesh out the underlying political argument--everyone will need to compromise to get this done and better this year than next. wsj.com/articles/the-e…
My comments are filled up with blame for President Trump and Leader McConnell. A lot of that is justified. But blaming them, however justifiably, does not help anyone if nothing ever passes. Instead need to figure out how to pass something. Which is going to require compromises.
Maybe the Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats in which case they could come back and try for more. But when you're worried about a problem should place a lot of emphasis on making it as unbad as possible in the bad case not as good as possible in the good case. So better now.
Read 6 tweets
2 Nov
What reduces economic activity: (i) the virus leading people to choose to distance or (ii) government required distancing.

Research on services in March/April has found it is much more (i) than (ii) than many people thought.

BUT, mistake to think is always/everywhere 100% (i).
1. Manufacturing and construction mostly shutdown when it was required to and continued when it was allowed to. That is a smaller share of GDP than services but clearly a case of govt policies reducing economic activity (for better or worse, may be worth doing to save lives).
2. In some cases govt required social distancing may be like an investment that pays off: less economic activity today but better virus control & more activity in the future. In this case one would see a short-run tradeoff between activity & govt social distancing, but worth it.
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If we are not taking *some* steps (at the margin) to curb the virus that also hurt the economy then we are not doing enough to curb the virus.

It is also possible that our efforts to curb the virus help the economy (in total or on average).

(Possibly educational thread.)
In this case, as in many others where we have multiple objectives (think climate change and inequality, for example), we should do absolutely everything we can that is win-win. More masks and more testing might reduce the virus and help economic activity.

Many win-win policies.
In addition to everything that is win-win, we should also evaluate everything with a tradeoff and adopt those that save lives at an acceptable cost for the economy (e.g., closing indoor dining) and reject those that save lives at an unacceptable cost (e.g., halting construction).
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26 Oct
When economists frame a non-consensus view as obviously correct economics (or even worse "arithmetic"). It devalues the currency of consensus economic views. Take a stand and defend it, just don't claim obvious truth. Eg, @caseybmulligan on fiscal policy. nationalreview.com/2020/10/paul-k…
Casey argues UI and other transfers do not increase total demand because we cannot simply count the additional spending associated with them without also counting "the spending (both consumption and investment) of those who finance the government."
The CARES Act was not paid for w/ current tax increases. @caseybmulligan knows that but appears to be arguing in support of "Ricardian equivalence"--that it will be paid for by future tax increases & rational people anticipating those will cut back on their spending now.
Read 13 tweets
26 Oct
On Thursday the government will release its estimate of GDP growth in the third quarter. The number is expected to be something like 35%. Three bits of arithmetic context followed by some advance interpretation.
1. The reported growth of -31.4% for Q2 was less bad than the headline because it was an annualized number--which is what would happen if the economy contracts the same way 4 quarters in a row. The economy really shrunk by 9.0%.
Similarly if the headline growth rate on Thursday is 35% then it will mean the economy grew at 7.8% for the quarter. That is also very, very high--just the better way to think about it.
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