David Levey, former Head of Moody's Sovereign Risk Rating Team, Discusses U.S. Fiscal Insolvency

Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff · Sep 18, 2025 · 1h 4m

Back in May, Moody's joined the other two major U.S. debt-rating companies, S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Group, in downgrading US government debt. No surprise. Federal debt was close to 30 percent of GDP a quarter Century back. Today it's close to 100 percent and projected to exceed 150 percent by mid Century. No one is better positioned to discuss our nation's fiscal condition than David Levey.

David spent almost 19 years servicing as Managing Director and Co-Head of the Sovereign Ratings Unit of Moody's Investors Service. Indeed, David is arguably the father of sovereign risk rating having…