A New Structure for U.S. Federal Debt
November 2015 In David Wessel, Ed., The $13 Trillion Question: Managing the U.S. Government's Debt, pp. 91-146. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Last manuscript. I propose a restructuring of U. S. Federal debt. All debt should be perpetual, paying coupons forever with no principal payment. The debt should be composed of 1) Fixed-value, floating-rate, electronically transferable debt. Such debt looks like a money-market fund, or reserves at the Fed, to an investor. 2) Nominal perpetuities: This debt pays a coupon of $1 per bond, forever. 3) Indexed perpetuities: This debt pays a coupon of $1 times the current consumer price index (CPI). 4) All debt should be free of income, estate, capital gains, and other taxes. 5) long term debt should have explicitly variable coupons. 6) Swaps. The Treasury should adjust maturity structure, interest rate and inflation exposure of the Federal budget by transacting in simple swaps among these securities.