Jared Bernstein

And it never happened.

I didn't think we got there, but I could be misremembering.

Whenever we used to have revenue meetings, which we had all the time, because we were desperately new and more, somebody would say, can we move that?

And you know, the next meeting higher up would come the answer.

No, we can't.

It's not, it's not cheap.

Um, I think, yeah, I think if you're talking 10 years, you're in the, I think in the seven, 800 billion range.

I, I, I, I know these numbers when I'm working on that stuff, but I'm not going to, we're not going to hold it.

I think that's the range.

And, um, uh,

When we obviously when we did it, it was deficit financed.

And I don't know if you've seen any of my work on this, but I am a pretty much a lifetime fiscal dove who's lately become a bit hawkish.

I don't think we're at the breaking point, but I think we're at a level of unsustainability that is dangerously tempting a breaking point.

And it's not even clear what a breaking point is.

We have a sovereign currency that we print.

So, you know, it's not like we're going to have a list trust moment because our debt markets are so large and so liquid and we have the dominant global currency and all that in the dollar.

But the reason I flipped-

And I've written extensively about this, including a New York Times op-ed that had a graphic in it that kind of explains this, is because interest rates are higher now.

And I think the thing that people missed over all those years where they had their hair on fire is they just didn't recognize, I mean, it's kind of right in front of you, how the real interest rate was so low, even negative in some cases, that we could handily service our debt without breaking a sweat.

But now the interest rate is higher, and my priors are that it's going to stay up.