The $13 Trillion Question: Managing the U.S. Government’s Debt
There is a lot of attention paid to the size of the federal debt, which amounts to more than $13 trillion. There is very little attention paid to how the U.S. Treasury borrows all that money – how much short-term, how-much long-term, how much at fixed rates, how much at rates that vary with inflation.
On November 10, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings and the University of Chicago Booth School’s Initiative on Global Markets take a close look at how the US government does its borrowing, the subject of a new Brookings Institution Press book, “The $13 Trillion Question: Managing the U.S. Government’s Debt.”
Robin Greenwood of the Harvard Business School will argue that that Treasury should rely more on short-term and less on long-term borrowing than it has traditionally and that, particularly when the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates to zero, the Treasury and Fed should do more coordinating than they generally do. And John Cochrane of Stanford and University of Chicago will make the case for a radical change in the debt instruments the Treasury issues, suggesting that the Treasury rely heavily on debts with no fixed-maturity (perpetuals, in the jargon of the trade.)
The event will be held at the Booth School in Chicago, and will be webcast live.
Agenda
Session I: The Optimal Maturity of Government Debt and Debt Management Conflicts between the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve
Austan Goolsbee
Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics - University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Robin Greenwood
George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking - Harvard Business School
Samuel G. Hanson
Marvin Bower Associate Professor - Harvard Business School
Guido Lorenzoni
Breen Family Professor - Northwestern University
Session II: A New Structure for U.S. Federal Debt
Anil K. Kashyap
University of Chicago
John H. Cochrane
Senior Fellow - Hoover Institution
James J. McAndrews
Executive Vice President - Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Session III: Panel Discussion
David Wessel
Director - The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Senior Fellow - Economic Studies
Seth B. Carpenter
Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets - Department of the Treasury
Charles Evans
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
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