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

Sprint and T-Mobile propose a major merger in order to better compete with AT&T and Verizon.

Joseph Corr

2018-05-03 07:34:00 Thursday ET

Sprint and T-Mobile propose a major merger in order to better compete with AT&T and Verizon.

Sprint and T-Mobile propose a major merger in order to better compete with AT&T and Verizon. This mega merger is worth $26.5 billion and involves an all

+See More

Neoliberal public choice continues to spin national taxation and several other forms of government intervention.

Peter Prince

2019-01-07 18:42:00 Monday ET

Neoliberal public choice continues to spin national taxation and several other forms of government intervention.

Neoliberal public choice continues to spin national taxation and several other forms of government intervention. The key post-crisis consensus focuses on go

+See More

Bank of England publishes its latest insights into the economic impact of Brexit on British real productivity, capital investment, and labor supply.

Olivia London

2018-12-03 10:40:00 Monday ET

Bank of England publishes its latest insights into the economic impact of Brexit on British real productivity, capital investment, and labor supply.

Bank of England publishes its latest insights into the economic impact of Brexit on British real productivity, capital investment, and labor supply as of 20

+See More

Facebook reaches a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Cambridge Analytica user privacy violations.

Monica McNeil

2019-08-12 07:30:00 Monday ET

Facebook reaches a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Cambridge Analytica user privacy violations.

Facebook reaches a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Cambridge Analytica user privacy violations. The Federal Trade Commission (F

+See More

JPMorgan Chase CEO says President Trump has now awaken the animal spirits in U.S. stocks.

Dan Rochefort

2017-02-13 09:35:00 Monday ET

JPMorgan Chase CEO says President Trump has now awaken the animal spirits in U.S. stocks.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says President Trump has now awaken the *animal spirits* in the U.S. stock market. The key phrase, animal spirits, is the

+See More

Harvard financial economist Alberto Cavallo empirically shows the recent *Amazon effect* of faster retail price adjustments.

Amy Hamilton

2018-08-23 11:34:00 Thursday ET

Harvard financial economist Alberto Cavallo empirically shows the recent *Amazon effect* of faster retail price adjustments.

Harvard financial economist Alberto Cavallo empirically shows the recent *Amazon effect* that online retailers such as Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay etc use fas

+See More