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 normalizes the current interest rate hike to signal its own independence from the White House.

Apple Boston

2019-01-08 17:46:00 Tuesday ET

Federal Reserve normalizes the current interest rate hike to signal its own independence from the White House.

President Trump forces the Federal Reserve to normalize the current interest rate hike to signal its own monetary policy independence from the White House.

+See More

Disney acquires 21st Century Fox in a $52 billion landmark deal.

Amy Hamilton

2017-12-15 07:42:00 Friday ET

Disney acquires 21st Century Fox in a $52 billion landmark deal.

Disney acquires 21st Century Fox in a $52 billion landmark deal. This deal has a total value of about $66 billion while Disney assumes $14 billion of Fox

+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 imposes punitive tariffs on $60 billion Chinese imports in a brand-new trade war.

Laura Hermes

2018-03-25 08:39:00 Sunday ET

President Trump imposes punitive tariffs on $60 billion Chinese imports in a brand-new trade war.

President Trump imposes punitive tariffs on $60 billion Chinese imports in a brand-new trade war as China hits back with retaliatory tariffs on $3 billion U

+See More

U.S. regulatory agencies may consider broader economic issues in their antitrust probe into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Joseph Corr

2019-07-03 11:35:00 Wednesday ET

U.S. regulatory agencies may consider broader economic issues in their antitrust probe into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.

U.S. regulatory agencies may consider broader economic issues in their antitrust probe into tech titans such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google etc. Hou

+See More

President Trump remains optimistic about the Sino-American trade war resolution.

Monica McNeil

2019-02-05 10:32:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump remains optimistic about the Sino-American trade war resolution.

President Trump remains optimistic about the Sino-American trade war resolution of both trade deficit eradication and tech transfer enforcement. Trump now s

+See More