Brian Riedl on how interest rates could drive a debt crisis:
The average interest rate paid by Washington on its debt has fallen from 8.4 percent to 1.5 percent over the past three decades. However, economic variables tend to fluctuate, and only a fool would assume that a current economic trend will last forever. In the past, economic forecasts and markets told us that high inflation and high unemployment cannot happen simultaneously, that the late-1990s tech-stock bubble wouldn’t burst, and that national housing prices can never fall. Just last year, the Federal Open Market Committee consistently underestimated current-year inflation by three full percentage points. Interest-rate forecasts have proven spectacularly wrong for 50 years.
But now, economic commentators assure us that soaring federal debt is affordable because interest rates will remain low forever.
By contrast, the Congressional Budget Office projects that rates will nudge up to 4.6 percent over three decades. . . .
Read the whole thing here.