2018-06-01 07:30:00 Fri ET
treasury deficit debt employment inflation interest rate macrofinance fiscal stimulus economic growth fiscal budget public finance treasury bond treasury yield sovereign debt sovereign wealth fund tax cuts government expenditures
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.
2019-06-15 10:28:00 Saturday ET
The Sino-American trade war may slash global GDP by $600 billion. If the Trump administration imposes tariffs on all the Chinese imports and China retaliate
2019-09-30 07:33:00 Monday ET
AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube September 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of September 2019: (1) Former
2019-10-13 16:22:00 Sunday ET
Apple unveils 3 iPhone 11 models with new original video services and stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon. Apple releases t
2019-04-21 10:07:54 Sunday ET
Central bank independence remains important for core inflation containment in the current age of political populism. In accordance with the dual mandate of
2022-10-05 08:24:00 Wednesday ET
Precautionary-motive and agency reasons for corporate cash management Bates, Kahle, and Stulz (JF 2009) empirically find that public firms have doubled t
2023-03-21 11:28:00 Tuesday ET
Barry Eichengreen compares the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession as historical episodes of economic woes. Barry Eichengreen (2016)