Wouldn't it be wise to be thrifty at this time?

"Nearly a year into a pandemic that has ravaged the global economy like no time since the Great Depression", "Calculating the prospects of a vigorous economic recovery entails wrestling with questions of human nature," wrote Peter S Goodwin. "The Depression imprinted a generation with a tendency towards thriftiness and aversion to risk." If people don't spend companies will not expand capacity and employment levels will fall, suppressing economic growth. The Indian government must spend more on infrastructure projects to revive growth, wrote Shobhana Subramanian. "Without a near-term spend of Rs 4-5 lakh crore (Rs 4-5 trillion), it is going to be difficult to reboot the economy; thousands of small units will simply perish, sectors such as restaurants, aviation, tourism and hospitality, which employ large numbers will be battered, and there will be a spillover effect on other sections of the economy." Problem is, "Cumulative debt levels now exceed GDP in many developed countries; and, on average, debt as a share of GDP is approaching post World War II levels," wrote Prof Raghuram Rajan. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) posits that any government can print any amount of its own currency to create full employment and taxes should be used only to control inflation. However, a lot of the money handed out by the government will return to banks as savings and banks will park the excess money with the central bank through the reverse repo window. In May, banks in India parked over Rs 8 trillion with the Reserve Bank (RBI) at 3.75% interest. Yields on government bonds are zero or even negative in developed countries so the governments there might as well lock in very low interest rates by long-term borrowing from commercial banks. However, banks will only lend to a government if they are sure of its ability to repay the old debt so the government could use inflation to reduce its debt load. Emerging economies are restricted by their ability to repay debt and by the risk of inflation. Recently, sovereign bonds worth 4 billion euros issued by China generated orders worth 18 billion euros. Bonds for 750 million euros were priced at -0.15%, wrote Prof VA Nageswaran. "Even as this issue was being priced in the market, news of defaults by many Chinese state-owned enterprises were hitting the wires." "Global debt is expected to soar to a record $277 trillion by the end of the year as governments and companies continue to spend in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Institute of Finance said in a report," reported Reuters. Global GDP is expected to be just over $87 trillion in 2019. Richard Cookson fears inflation will pick up "both soon and sharply. "As has been the case for many years, global inflation has 'Made in Asia' stamped all over it." "Many erroneously believe gold is some sort of inflation hedge, because of our experience in the 1970s," wrote Jared Dillian. "Gold is a hedge on policy-makers screwing up, and there has been a lot screwing up in the last 20 years." Economists in India do not understand why Indians buy gold. Perhaps, because they have been screwed. Repeatedly.