system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can someone explain leveraging debt.

I’m mostly interested in how governments use their debt. Also what’s equity?
gpt
I am assuming you are talking about investment finance here. Equity means shares in companies. Leveraging debt means borrowing money (paying interest on it) and using the money to invest (in shares maybe?) and hopefully getting a much higher return than the cost of the interest of the money borrowed.

This is not usually the language used for governments and they would not normally borrow money with the intention to invest it to get a higher return - and would be ill advise to do so. Nevertheless while not trying to do that, government capital spending can be modelled in that way. Governments typically borrow and have national debts while at the same time building roads or sewers which have a long term return.