Fiscal policy with high debt and low interest rates

William Gale

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Policymakers in the United States face a combination of high and rising federal debt and low current and projected interest rates on that debt. Rising future debt will reduce growth and impede efforts to enact new policy initiatives. Low interest rates reduce, but do not eliminate, these concerns. The federal fiscal outlook is unsustainable even with projected interest rates that remain below the growth rate for the next 30 years. Short-term policy responses should focus on investments that are preferably tax- financed rather than debt-financed. Most importantly, policymakers should enact a debt reduction plan that is gradually implemented over the medium- and long-term. This would avoid reducing aggregate demand significantly in the short-term and, if done well, could actually stimulate current consumption and production. It would stimulate growth in the long-term, provide fiscal insurance against higher interest rates or other adverse outcomes, give businesses and individuals clarity about future policy and time to adjust, and provide policymakers with assurance that they could consider new initiatives within a framework of sustainable fiscal policy.

Keywords: interest rates; federal debt; deficits; fiscal policy; public economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E43 E62 H6 H68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Maintaining the Strength of American Capitalism (2019): pp. 78-115

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/99207/1/MPRA_paper_99207.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:99207

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().