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

Due to U.S. tariffs, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam instead of China.

Jonah Whanau

2019-09-03 14:29:00 Tuesday ET

Due to U.S. tariffs, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam instead of China.

Due to U.S. tariffs and other cloudy causes of economic policy uncertainty, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam i

+See More

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America.

Jacob Miramar

2019-06-27 10:39:00 Thursday ET

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America.

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America. Their latest estimates show that the top 0.1

+See More

Partisanship matters more than the socioeconomic influence of the rich and elite interest groups.

John Fourier

2019-08-26 11:30:00 Monday ET

Partisanship matters more than the socioeconomic influence of the rich and elite interest groups.

Partisanship matters more than the socioeconomic influence of the rich and elite interest groups. This new trend emerges from the recent empirical analysis

+See More

The bank-credit-card model and fintech platforms have adapted well to the recent digitization of cashless finance.

Daphne Basel

2023-11-30 08:29:00 Thursday ET

The bank-credit-card model and fintech platforms have adapted well to the recent digitization of cashless finance.

In addition to the OECD bank-credit-card model and Chinese online payment platforms, the open-payments gateways of UPI in India and Pix in Brazil have adapt

+See More

Financial institutions benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

Charlene Vos

2017-04-01 06:40:00 Saturday ET

Financial institutions benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

With the current interest rate hike, large banks and insurance companies are likely to benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

+See More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold.

Jacob Miramar

2018-12-07 11:35:00 Friday ET

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold. NYSE and NASDAQ share prices rebo

+See More