Even absent high interest rates, as Japan highlights, debt overhangs are a hindrance to growth.
The relationship between growth, inflation and debt, no doubt, merits further study; it is a question that cannot be settled with mere rhetoric, no matter how superficially convincing.
In the meantime, historical experience and early examination of new data suggest the need to be cautious about surrendering to "this-time-is-different" syndrome and decreeing that surging government debt isn't as significant a problem in the present as it was in the past.
(Carmen M. Reinhart is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Kenneth S. Rogoff is a professor of economics at Harvard University. They are co-authors of This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. The opinions expressed are their own.)