Traditional standards of responsible federal fiscal behavior have been blown away by two black-swan events—the housing and financial crisis of 2008 and thereafter, and the coronavirus pandemic that emerged in 2020. Because there has been no cataclysm since, some commentators have leapt to the conclusion that "debt doesn't matter." But an alternative view is that it does, and that climbing debt exposes the economy more and more to gradual erosion of prosperity and world leadership, and even to serious financial disruption.

In a new episode of Sustaining Capitalism, two experts—Bo Cutter, Senior Fellow and Director, Next American Economy Project at the Roosevelt Institute, and Joe Kasputys, CEO of Economic Ventures—will put the dangers to the economy into perspective, and discuss potential solutions.