Continuing the Chatauqua on Reinhart-Rogoff: it’s a pretty devastating observation that the only observations of high debt / low growth for the United States come from the immediate postwar years, when post-war demobilization naturally led to falling real GDP. But what about the broader picture?

R-R haven’t released their full data set. But as best I can tell, all or almost all observations of advanced countries with gross debt over 90 percent of GDP come from four main groupings:

1. The US and the UK in the immediate aftermath of WWII

2. Japan after 1995

3. Canada in the mid 90s

4. Belgium and Italy since the late 1980s

We’ve already seen that (1) is a case of spurious correlation. Surely (2) is largely a case of causation running the other way, from Japan’s slide into slow growth and deflation to its rising debt. As for (3), advocates of austerity have been using Canada in the mid-90s as an example of a success story; surely they can’t have it both ways. This leaves (4); but my first take would be that both Belgium and Italy have problems that have both inhibited growth and led to a runup of debt.

I may have missed some small-country examples; but surely they wouldn’t change the picture. There really, truly isn’t anything there.