Deutsche Bank (DB) put out an imprecise piece of research saying that higher debt levels mean higher government interest payments. This isn't really true because the government can technically set its interest rates at whatever it wants. For instance, there was nothing stopping the Fed from keeping rates at 0% forever.¹ What DB was really implying was that there is a direct connection between debt and inflation (which interest rates are primarily a function of). But this is not really a good conclusion considering that there is ample evidence that higher government debt does not