Year-on-Year Change in Federal Debt to GDP or Potential GDP

Reader Bruce Hall notes the extreme jump in debt-to-GDP in 2020 was attributable in part to the public health economic lockdowns, to wit:

But the economic shutdowns certainly affected the equation’s denominator in 2020.

I note that using the counterfactual potential GDP as estimated by CBO does not change the picture substantively – I add the red line to the blue line shown in the previous post.

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