Can you measure Subnational/ State and local government debt?

Can you measure Subnational/ State and local government debt? 





Most foreign governments (For IMF requirements) have to aggregate their federal and state levels of debt. The US does not.  I'd like the American people to know how much debt the US government holds by the federal government and the sub-sovereign debt which is also dependent on the US dollar and the US federal government.  


US treasury manages this by an aggregated yield curve. In reality, this debt is held by the federal government just like all other governments in the world. I'd like people to see this in the WP.  Data Can be found on https://emma.msrb.org/Search/Search.aspx  


Even by publishing the descriptive data of how much state and local governments hold in debt, this gives Americans a better understanding of the value of its government, how much the US dollar holds in debt, and the importance of muni debt for development of our critical infrastructure.


 John Oliver calls some of these places as “ghost governments”  in his post on Special districts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3saU5racsGE  


The problem is he doesn’t go far enough to describe how and why these ghost governments create debt and manage it.  It would be helpful for investors to better understand the US public sector local government pension problem. 


In my academic networks of public finance we study the concept of “Fiscal Space”or the available use and space in public budgets for managing our debt. What I don’t think is so well known, outside of academia, is if we add the federal debt, with the subnational debt, it could really be important for transparency of our democratic system of government and its use of debt issuances. 

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