Will Brian Riedl win a bet that average interest paid on US federal debt exceeds 4.6% before 2051?

Metaculus
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34%
Unlikely
Yes

Question description

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank which describes its mission as follows

...to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.

Alan Cole blogs about the economy at Full Stack Economics and is a former senior economist with the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress where he advised Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

On November 9, 2021, Brian Riedl proposed the following bet

I'm willing to bet you that the average interest rate paid on the federal debt exceeds 4.6% at some point within 30 years (CBO assumes it gradually rises to 4.6% by 2051).

Alan Cole accepted. They agreed to resolve the bet based on the average interest rate as currently calculated by CBO in its economical historical data.

In The 2021 Long-Term Budget Outlook published by the CBO in March of 2021, the CBO projects

...the average interest rate on federal debt initially decreases from 1.4 percent in 2021 to 1.2 percent in 2024 and then increases to 4.6 percent by 2051.

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PlatformMetaculus
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34%
Unlikely

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank which describes its mission as follows

...to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.

Alan Cole blogs about the...

Last updated: 2024-05-17
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Metaculus
Forecasts: 71

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