The Economist: “Government debt is one of humanity’s great inventions. It allows societies to store wealth, fight crises and build for the future. After Britain’s superior access to credit helped it defeat Napoleon in 1815, one historian likened the country’s credit lines to Aladdin’s lamp. Two centuries later, during the covid-19 pandemic, much of the world looked on with similar astonishment as rich countries borrowed freely to splurge on support for households and health care.”“The magic of borrowing, though, comes with a temptation—one that David Hume and Alexander Hamilton worried about in the late 18th century. If a country is sufficiently creditworthy to cover its existing debts, it is in a position to borrow more. Having manageable debts means you can manage more debt. And so it is all too easy for debt to grow.”“If this goes on for too long, governments start to face pushback. The bond markets which meet their need for debt start to charge them more. New borrowing gets harder—and so does rolling over old debts. If governments do not then tighten their belts, the country’s all-important creditworthiness erodes in a way which can easily spiral out of control.”