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
Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most corporations.
Daisy Harvey

2023-07-28 11:28:00 Friday ET

Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most corporations.

Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most U.S. public corpor

+See More
Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction
Apple Boston

2022-02-25 00:00:00 Friday ET

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction  The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964), Lintner (1965), and Bla

+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
President Trump criticizes the WTO and proposes indexing capital gains taxes to inflation for U.S. investors.
Charlene Vos

2018-08-29 10:37:00 Wednesday ET

President Trump criticizes the WTO and proposes indexing capital gains taxes to inflation for U.S. investors.

In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, President Trump criticizes the World Trade Organization (WTO), proposes indexing capital gains taxes to inflation

+See More
Disruptive innovators often apply their 5 major skills in new niche discovery and market share dominance.
James Campbell

2020-05-07 08:26:00 Thursday ET

Disruptive innovators often apply their 5 major skills in new niche discovery and market share dominance.

Disruptive innovators often apply their 5 major pragmatic skills in new blue-ocean niche discovery and market share dominance. Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen,

+See More
With majority control, House Democrats pass 2 bills to reopen the U.S. government without funding the Trump border wall.
John Fourier

2019-01-12 10:33:00 Saturday ET

With majority control, House Democrats pass 2 bills to reopen the U.S. government without funding the Trump border wall.

With majority control, House Democrats pass 2 bills to reopen the U.S. government without funding the Trump border wall. President Trump makes a surprise Wh

+See More