The euro crisis, Japan’s sluggish economy, and partisan disagreements in the United States about the role of government all have at least one thing in common: worries about high levels of public debt.

“Nearly everyone agrees that public debt in many advanced economies is too high to be sustainable and must be addressed. There is little agreement, however, about when and how that addressing should be done – or even, in many cases, just how serious the debt problem is.

As the former director of the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs Department, Carlo Cottarelli has helped countries across the globe confront their public finance woes. He also had direct experience in advising his own country, Italy, about its chronic fiscal ailments. In this straightforward, plain-language book, Cottarelli explains how and why excessive public debt can harm economic growth and can lead to crises such as those experienced recently in Italy and several other European countries.”