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

Goldman, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and UBS face an antitrust lawsuit.

Daphne Basel

2018-09-30 14:34:00 Sunday ET

Goldman, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and UBS face an antitrust lawsuit.

Goldman, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and UBS face an antitrust lawsuit. In this lawsuit, a U.S. judge alleges the illegal cons

+See More

Agile lean enterprises break down organizational silos to promote smart collaboration for better profitability and customer loyalty.

Laura Hermes

2020-11-03 08:30:00 Tuesday ET

Agile lean enterprises break down organizational silos to promote smart collaboration for better profitability and customer loyalty.

Agile lean enterprises break down organizational silos to promote smart collaboration for better profitability and customer loyalty. Heidi Gardner (2017

+See More

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon views wealth inequality as a major economic problem in America.

Monica McNeil

2019-12-19 14:43:00 Thursday ET

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon views wealth inequality as a major economic problem in America.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon views wealth inequality as a major economic problem in America. Dimon now warns that the rich Americans have been getting wea

+See More

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt.

Peter Prince

2018-08-07 07:33:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt.

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt. This plan entails taxing American consumers and produc

+See More

Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Matthew Rabin assess the recent advances in the behavioral economic science.

James Campbell

2023-09-14 09:28:00 Thursday ET

Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Matthew Rabin assess the recent advances in the behavioral economic science.

Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Matthew Rabin assess the recent advances in the behavioral economic science. Colin Camerer, George Loewenstei

+See More

Elizabeth Warren warns of Trump financial reforms that shake up the 5 key pillars of bank regulation.

Dan Rochefort

2017-11-19 08:37:00 Sunday ET

Elizabeth Warren warns of Trump financial reforms that shake up the 5 key pillars of bank regulation.

In 2000, a former law professor at Harvard proposed establishing the Financial Product Safety Commission in order to protect consumer rights in the provisio

+See More