Projections of national debt in the US and UK have triggered panic – yet investment in the future is crucial to recovery ‘At every stage in the growth of the debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing, and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever.” So wrote Lord Thomas Macaulay, the great 19th-century British historian. He was alluding to the English public debt, but he might as well have been referring to the United States in the 21st century.