How To Tackle Soaring Public Debt – Analysis eurasiareview.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eurasiareview.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Public debt soared to a record during the pandemic, topping global gross domestic product. Now, with government debt still elevated, the rise in interest rates and the strong US dollar is adding to interest costs, in turn weighing on growth and fueling financial stability risks.
Agnès Bénassy-Quéré
The Maastricht fiscal architecture relies on limits on debt and the general government deficit. The reference values used are 3% for the deficit and 60% for the debt, both in terms of GDP. These reference values are not specified in the body of the Treaty. Instead, they are defined in an annexed Protocol. The expression “reference values” is used six times when defining the two criteria to be used by the European Commission when monitoring developments of public finances, with a view to identifying “gross errors” in the conduct of fiscal policy. These two reference values have no solid ground in either theory or empirical evidence. No such a claim was made at the time (or ever).