The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018.

John Fourier

2018-06-01 07:30:00 Fri ET

The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that this ratio will surge to 96% in 2028. Although many blame the Trump tax cuts as the key root cause, the increases in health care and retirement benefits suggest a different real reason for U.S. deficit severity.

Harvard professor Martin Feldstein attributes the recent rise of U.S. budget deficit from 4% to 5% of total GDP to increases in Medicare and social security retirement benefits for middle-class older Americans. These increases in core health care and retirement benefits account for about 2.7% of total GDP. The neoclassical Sargent-Wallace thesis suggests that the central bank cannot finance incessant increases in core deficits with government bond issuance regardless of money supply growth. This money supply expansion would lead to inexorable inflationary pressures that defeat the dual mandate of both maximum employment and price stability in the suboptimal fiscal-monetary policy coordination. Inflation serves as a seigniorage tax that would in turn dampen real macroeconomic variates such as household consumption, capital investment, labor supply, and total economic output. In light of this ripple effect on sustainable financial market growth and prosperity, the law of inadvertent consequences counsels caution.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Edge strategies help business leaders improve core products and services in a more cost-effective and less risky way.

John Fourier

2020-09-24 10:26:00 Thursday ET

Edge strategies help business leaders improve core products and services in a more cost-effective and less risky way.

Edge strategies help business leaders improve core products and services in a more cost-effective and less risky way. Alan Lewis and Dan McKone (2016)

+See More

U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson encounters Brexit defeat during his new premiership.

Chanel Holden

2019-10-15 09:13:00 Tuesday ET

U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson encounters Brexit defeat during his new premiership.

U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson encounters defeat during his new premiership. The first major vote would pave the path of least resistance to passing a no

+See More

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors.

Amy Hamilton

2018-12-19 17:41:00 Wednesday ET

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors.

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors. Tencent Music goes public and marks the biggest IPO by a m

+See More

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Amazon (U.S. stock symbol: $AMZN).

Dan Rochefort

2025-09-14 14:23:00 Sunday ET

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Amazon (U.S. stock symbol: $AMZN).

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fund

+See More

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Apple Boston

2022-02-25 00:00:00 Friday ET

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction  The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964), Lintner (1965), and Bla

+See More

Treasury bond yield curve inversion often signals the next economic recession in America.

Monica McNeil

2018-10-11 08:44:00 Thursday ET

Treasury bond yield curve inversion often signals the next economic recession in America.

Treasury bond yield curve inversion often signals the next economic recession in America. In fact, U.S. bond yield curve inversion correctly predicts the da

+See More