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

Federal Reserve institutes the third interest rate cut with a rare pause signal.

Daisy Harvey

2019-12-10 09:30:00 Tuesday ET

Federal Reserve institutes the third interest rate cut with a rare pause signal.

Federal Reserve institutes the third interest rate cut with a rare pause signal. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reduces the benchmark interest rat

+See More

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Fiona Sydney

2020-09-03 10:26:00 Thursday ET

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios. Christopher Worley, Thomas Willi

+See More

In the modern monetary system, each CBDC helps anchor public trust in money in support of economic welfare, especially in a new cashless society.

Joseph Corr

2024-07-31 09:28:00 Wednesday ET

In the modern monetary system, each CBDC helps anchor public trust in money in support of economic welfare, especially in a new cashless society.

In the modern monetary system, each new CBDC helps anchor public trust in money in support of economic welfare, especially in a cashless society. In our

+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

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

Peter Prince

2017-03-09 05:32:00 Thursday ET

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

From 1927 to 2017, the U.S. stock market has delivered a hefty average return of about 11% per annum. The U.S. average stock market return is high in stark

+See More

Credit supply growth drives business cycle fluctuations and often sows the seeds of their own subsequent destruction.

Fiona Sydney

2018-04-26 07:37:00 Thursday ET

Credit supply growth drives business cycle fluctuations and often sows the seeds of their own subsequent destruction.

Credit supply growth drives business cycle fluctuations and often sows the seeds of their own subsequent destruction. The global financial crisis from 2008

+See More