This is the chart that I’ve been thinking about today.
The US government has been able to borrow on the cheap for most of it’s existence, with the exception of 70s and 80s when stagflation put the clamp down. Treasury rates are soaring right now…or at least, it feels that way because for most of my adult life the United States has been viewed as arguably the safest borrower in history. What follows are in some ways the only two questions that matter for the US economy. Is the US government a reliable institution? Is economic growth going to keep pace with inflation? The answer to each question (and their subcomponents) is, of course, unknown, but the market seems to think the net of that question is going in the wrong direction.
That said, for all of the neverending parade of (sometimes unintential) nostalgia that seems to pollute the discourse, wow, 1975-1985 was not exactly macroeconomically “aspirational”.
Economist Writing Every Day 