Owatonna, Minnesota Correspondent — The scale is historically large and some of it prevented a deeper collapse. Both true.

Sustaining this level after the acute emergency raises the probability of higher inflation and higher rates once demand recovers and the balance sheet normalizes.

The part I’d flag from a planning background is behavioral. We have now established, twice in twelve years, that a sufficiently large shock produces a very large fiscal and monetary response. Households and firms and legislatures have all learned that, and the expectation itself changes what future policy has to overcome.

Prescott Valley, Arizona Correspondent — Crisis spending at this magnitude was always going to enlarge the debt stock. The real question is whether the political system can return to a lower path once the emergency recedes.

If it can’t, the combination of a large debt and eventual monetary normalization puts clear upward pressure on rates and, under some conditions, on prices.

Sustainability depends on the exit as much as on the entry, and the exit is the weaker part of the story. Nobody has described one. I’ve read the packages and there’s no provision in any of them that explains what turns them off other than a date somebody will move.

Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — Large crisis deficits are understandable. Keeping them raises genuine risks.

I would ask the room to notice something about the conversation, though. The United States is debating whether borrowing at this scale is prudent. My country would not have been permitted to have that debate.

We entered this year with a debt burden built over decades and an economy that lost its tourism sector in a fortnight. The financing available to us was conditional, expensive, and small. The financing available to you was unlimited and nearly free.

That difference is the exorbitant privilege, and it is not a criticism so much as a fact worth keeping in view when Americans discuss what they can afford. The risk you are debating is a risk of inflation. The risk we faced was not being able to borrow at all.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Correspondent — The spending was enormous. If it becomes permanent the inflation and rate risks rise. That part isn’t complicated.

What I’d say from a place that needed it is that the design mattered more than the size. The forgivable loan program was calculated on payroll, which works for a firm with steady staff and works badly for a seasonal employer whose payroll in February bears no relationship to its payroll in July.

A lot of money went out and a lot of businesses here still closed, and those two facts aren’t in tension.

Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent — You can borrow across a month. You can’t borrow across a policy.

Some of the first checks were a fire hose on an actual fire. The later packages look like a hose aimed at a preference.

The first slice, defensible. The pile, no. Stop the hose when the ward isn’t the reason anymore.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — I supported keeping a shop alive in April because the state closed the shop. That’s not a bailout, that’s compensation, and the distinction matters.

I didn’t support turning every month into an emergency appropriation with a favorite list stapled to it.

Inflation and rates aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. They’re the risk you buy when you refuse to end the emergency spending after the emergency has changed shape.

The President signed necessary rescue. Congress used rescue as a Christmas tree, and I’d say that to either party’s members without adjusting the sentence.

Long Island, New York Correspondent — Assessments and prices here already twitch at less than this.

Flooding the system with transfers and with asset support simultaneously is how you lift paper wealth first and discover the grocery bill second. Those two effects arrive on different schedules and land on different people.

Whether it becomes durable depends on whether we stop, and stopping is a decision I haven’t heard anyone make. I’ve heard a mood.

Las Vegas, Nevada Correspondent — This valley needed the first bridge and I won’t pretend otherwise. We lost more employment proportionally than almost any metropolitan area in the country.

What it doesn’t need is a bridge to a permanent arrangement of paying people not to work a floor that’s allowed to open.

Sustainable is a word for a year, not for a regime. The regime risk is higher prices and a central bank eventually choosing between the expansion and the grocery ticket. I’d rather stop the extra now than meet that choice in a hallway.