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

Response to USPTO fintech patent protection and accreditation

Andy Yeh Alpha

2023-01-09 10:31:00 Monday ET

Response to USPTO fintech patent protection and accreditation

Response to USPTO fintech patent protection As of early-January 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has approved our U.S. utility patent

+See More

Leon Cooperman points out that the current Trump stock market rally now approaches normalization.

Amy Hamilton

2017-10-27 06:35:00 Friday ET

Leon Cooperman points out that the current Trump stock market rally now approaches normalization.

Leon Cooperman, Chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, points out that the current Trump stock market rally now approaches normalization. The U.S. stock market

+See More

Daniel Goleman explains why emotional intelligence is more important than high IQ for our success, virtue, and happiness in life.

Olivia London

2025-06-21 10:25:00 Saturday ET

Daniel Goleman explains why emotional intelligence is more important than high IQ for our success, virtue, and happiness in life.

Former New York Times science author and Harvard psychologist Daniel Goleman explains why emotional intelligence can serve as a more important critical succ

+See More

David Colander and Craig Freedman argue that economics went wrong when there was no neoclassical firewall between economic theories and policy reforms.

Becky Berkman

2023-11-28 11:35:00 Tuesday ET

David Colander and Craig Freedman argue that economics went wrong when there was no neoclassical firewall between economic theories and policy reforms.

David Colander and Craig Freedman argue that economics went wrong when there was no neoclassical firewall between economic theories and policy reforms. D

+See More

We share famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, and several others.

Laura Hermes

2018-08-31 08:42:00 Friday ET

We share famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, and several others.

We share several famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, Ben Franklin, Philip Fisher, and Michael Jensen.

+See More

Global stock market investors foresee the harbinger of a major economic downturn.

Monica McNeil

2019-09-17 08:33:00 Tuesday ET

Global stock market investors foresee the harbinger of a major economic downturn.

Global stock market investors foresee the harbinger of a major economic downturn. Many stock market investors become anxious due to negative term spreads an

+See More