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

President Trump criticizes the potential media merger between AT&T and Time Warner.

Chanel Holden

2017-11-05 09:45:00 Sunday ET

President Trump criticizes the potential media merger between AT&T and Time Warner.

President Trump criticizes the potential media merger between AT&T and Time Warner, the latter of which owns the anti-Trump media network CNN. President

+See More

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Rose Prince

2018-02-27 09:35:00 Tuesday ET

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time. He vows to prevent price instability for U.S. consumers, firms, and finan

+See More

President Trump introduces $50 billion tariffs on Chinese products and new limits on Chinese high-tech investments in America.

Apple Boston

2018-05-25 07:30:00 Friday ET

President Trump introduces $50 billion tariffs on Chinese products and new limits on Chinese high-tech investments in America.

President Trump introduces $50 billion tariffs on Chinese products and new limits on Chinese high-tech investments in America. This new round of tariffs

+See More

President Trump unveils his ambitious $1.5 trillion public infrastructure plan.

Daisy Harvey

2018-02-11 07:30:00 Sunday ET

President Trump unveils his ambitious $1.5 trillion public infrastructure plan.

President Trump unveils his ambitious $1.5 trillion public infrastructure plan. Trump proposes offering $100 billion in federal incentives to encourage stat

+See More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Dan Rochefort

2019-03-29 12:28:00 Friday ET

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook and interest rate cycle. Powell views the c

+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 Cisco Systems (U.S. stock symbol: $CSCO).

Joseph Corr

2025-10-07 10:30:00 Tuesday 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 Cisco Systems (U.S. stock symbol: $CSCO).

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