Gita Gopinath

There are a couple in Congress who are worried about the U.S.

debt level, but not enough given where debt levels are and given the foreseeable path of spending that's happening.

But again, to step back and see, it's helpful to look at what has happened historically and when have countries been able and how have they been able to bring their

debt to GDP levels down.

It's a couple of things.

It is one is just a spurt of growth that has come about either because you are some sort of a commodity exporter and you just had positive terms of trade shock.

And because of that, you've

your debt to GDP comes down.

You hit the jackpot, basically.

Yes, exactly.

You got lucky.

Or productivity growth, boom, higher above average growth.

And I believe that's what we're betting on this time with AI.

The hope is that with AI, we will get growth

from 2% up to 4%, and then that will certainly solve all of our problems if we have that on a persistent basis.

Countries, especially developed countries, have tended to rely on that.

And then you have inflation.

If you go back even further, and also, obviously, right after the pandemic, inflation helped bring debt-to-GDP levels down.

And then, of course, the third is what we see with developing countries is you end up with default and restructuring and crises.

And then again, you bring debt-to-GDP down that way.