The analysis begins with a restatement of constraints and an acknowledgement of uncertainties. No policy solutions are proposed at this stage.
The project follows eight ordered phases. Policy prescriptions are deferred until Phase 7. Metaphors and analogies are treated as potentially hazardous because they can obscure causal mechanisms. Every claim identifies what it explains, what it obscures and the evidence that could falsify it. Accounting identities are separated from causal dynamics, and technical feasibility is distinguished from political feasibility. Distributional impacts and second‑order effects are made explicit, and narrative lock‑in is avoided.
Uncertainties include future macroeconomic paths (economic growth, inflation, interest rates), behavioural responses to policy, political reactions and the evolution of international capital flows. While official datasets give reliable debt figures, the future trajectory of the interest‑rate–growth differential (r − g) and the resilience of the U.S. dollar’s safe‑asset status remain open questions. Distributional and second‑order effects rely on models that are sensitive to assumptions.
This phase explicitly confirms that the analysis refrains from proposing solutions. Subsequent phases gather evidence and frame the problem; only in Phase 7 will conditional pathways be outlined, and even then they are not definitive prescriptions.