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

Innovative investment theory and practice

Olivia London

2022-05-15 10:29:00 Sunday ET

Innovative investment theory and practice

Innovative investment theory and practice Corporate investment can be in the form of real tangible investment or intangible investment. The former conce

+See More

Amazon and Google face more intense antitrust scrutiny.

Apple Boston

2019-06-21 13:33:00 Friday ET

Amazon and Google face more intense antitrust scrutiny.

Amazon and Google face more intense antitrust scrutiny. In recent times, Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have reached an internal agreement

+See More

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of November 2019.

Daphne Basel

2019-11-26 11:30:00 Tuesday ET

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of November 2019.

AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube November 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of November 2019: (1) The Trump adm

+See More

The top Sino-U.S. tech titans now reach the trademark total market capitalization of $4 trillion as of July 2018.

Fiona Sydney

2018-07-07 10:33:00 Saturday ET

The top Sino-U.S. tech titans now reach the trademark total market capitalization of $4 trillion as of July 2018.

The east-west tech rivalry intensifies between BATs (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) and FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). These Sino-U.S.

+See 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

Allianz chairman Mohamed El-Erian bolsters a new American economic paradigm in lieu of the Washington consensus.

Apple Boston

2018-04-20 10:38:00 Friday ET

Allianz chairman Mohamed El-Erian bolsters a new American economic paradigm in lieu of the Washington consensus.

Allianz chairman Mohamed El-Erian bolsters a new American economic paradigm in lieu of the Washington consensus. The latter dominates the old school of thou

+See More