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

President Trump now agrees to cease fire in the trade conflict with the European Union.

Laura Hermes

2018-07-23 07:41:00 Monday ET

President Trump now agrees to cease fire in the trade conflict with the European Union.

President Trump now agrees to cease fire in the trade conflict with the European Union. Both sides can work together towards *zero tariffs, zero non-tariff

+See More

Dr Kai-Fu Lee praises China as the next epicenter of artificial intelligence and smart data analysis.

Peter Prince

2017-12-01 06:30:00 Friday ET

Dr Kai-Fu Lee praises China as the next epicenter of artificial intelligence and smart data analysis.

Dr Kai-Fu Lee praises China as the next epicenter of artificial intelligence, smart data analysis, and robotic automation. With prior IT careers at Apple, M

+See More

All of the 18 systemically important banks pass the annual Federal Reserve stress tests.

James Campbell

2019-07-30 15:33:00 Tuesday ET

All of the 18 systemically important banks pass the annual Federal Reserve stress tests.

All of the 18 systemically important banks pass the annual Federal Reserve stress tests. Many of the largest lenders announce higher cash payouts to shareho

+See More

America faces income inequality, political polarization, and dysfunctional governance.

Rose Prince

2018-05-17 07:41:00 Thursday ET

America faces income inequality, political polarization, and dysfunctional governance.

Has America become a democratic free land of crumbling infrastructure, galloping income inequality, bitter political polarization, and dysfunctional governa

+See More

Oxford macro professor Stephen Nickell and his co-authors delve into the trade-off between inflation and unemployment in the dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.

Apple Boston

2023-08-07 12:29:00 Monday ET

Oxford macro professor Stephen Nickell and his co-authors delve into the trade-off between inflation and unemployment in the dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.

Oxford macro professor Stephen Nickell and his co-authors delve into the trade-off between inflation and unemployment in the dual mandate of price stability

+See More

Ford and Baidu team up to test autonomous cars in China.

Jonah Whanau

2018-11-01 08:36:00 Thursday ET

Ford and Baidu team up to test autonomous cars in China.

Ford and Baidu team up to test autonomous cars in China. For the next few years, Ford and Baidu plan to collaborate on the car design and user acceptance te

+See More