Another Excellent Catch by Menzie Chinn
Reading IMF (2009), "United States: Selected Issues" (IMF Country Report No. 09/229 July), Menzie spots:
Debt Forecasts: Given anxieties about the trajectory of the debt to GDP ratio, the IMF analysis using stochastic simulation and the historical correlation between the primary surplus, debt, and output gap is particularly salient. While the staff [baseline current-policy] estimate predicts a debt to GDP ratio approaching 100 percent 2019, the econometrics suggest something much less alarming...
Time to start digging to figure out just what is going on here...
