A Telling History

If the past can tell one anything, it might be that when the U.S. financial crisis finally clears, public debt could rise more than 86 percent. That was the grim news that economist Kenneth Rogoff delivered to a full classroom Feb. 24 at the Kellogg School. Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and a professor of economics at Harvard University, served as the chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.