The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned of interest rate risks with regard to the growing mountain of global debt, which jumped to a record $226 trillion in 2020 as governments unleashed unprecedented waves of stimulus spending to blunt the impact of the pandemic recession. IMF officials said in a Dec. 15 blog post that 2020 saw the biggest one-year debt surge as central banks eased monetary conditions and governments, households, and businesses borrowed a total of $28 trillion, with the borrowing spree pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio to a whopping 256 percent. “Debt was already elevated going into the crisis, but now governments must navigate a world of record-high public and private debt levels, new virus mutations, and rising inflation,” IMF economists Vitor Gaspar, Paulo Medas, and Roberto Perrelli wrote in the note. Loose monetary conditions combined with fiscal stimulus and pandemic-related supply-side disruptions have pushed inflation in a number …