Can we ever have a debt crisis? (Krugman answers)

[cthulu2016]

jessefrederik May 19th, 2012 at 2:23 pm 31

Mr Krugman,

How much does the currency user/currency issuer distinction matter? Will the bond markets ever turn on Japan/US/UK?

Paul Krugman May 19th, 2012 at 2:32 pm 45In response to jessefrederik @ 31

For those not clued in, all of the debt crisis countries right now are either countries that gave up their own currencies for the euro, or borrowed heavily in someone else’s currency (Hungary). Countries that issue their own currency and borrow in it, like us, the British, and the Japanese are able to borrow at very low rates even when, like Japan, they have high debt levels.

So can they (and we) ever have a debt crisis? I think so, but it takes much higher levels of debt than even the Japanese have. People have to believe that there’s no way they can service the debt without printing lots of money, even once the economy has recovered.

The closest parallel I’ve been able to come up with (too deep in the weeds, but I can’t help myself) is France after World War I, which had its own currency but a basically impossible level of debt. Even so, the consequences weren’t catastrophic: a sharp drop in the franc, a brief bout of inflation that reduced the real value of the debt, and a return to stability.

The important point for now is that America is nothing, nothing like Greece — that is, unless the austerians push us into a full-on depression out of misplaced fear that we’re going to turn into Greece …

http://fdlbooksalon.com/2012/05/19/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-paul-krugman-end-this-depression-now/#comment-2219961

[dkf]

1. Our rates are low because the Fed buys the majority of our new issues.

I guess the question is if the Fed can buy up all the extra treasuries in perpetuity and in unlimited amounts.

[pscot]

2. Bonds don't circulate

so the fed can issue as many as they like without creating inflation. They just keep passing the paper from one hand to the other. I think that's what Krugman is getting at.