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

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2021.

Apple Boston

2021-02-02 14:24:00 Tuesday ET

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2021.

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms the major stock market benchmarks such as S&P 500, MSCI, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq. We implement

+See More

Warren Buffett stock market investment principles

Daphne Basel

2020-02-05 10:28:00 Wednesday ET

Warren Buffett stock market investment principles

Our proprietary AYA fintech finbuzz essay shines light on the modern collection of business insights with executive annotations and personal reflections. Th

+See More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold.

Jacob Miramar

2018-12-07 11:35:00 Friday ET

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints slower interest rate increases because the current rate is just below the neutral threshold. NYSE and NASDAQ share prices rebo

+See More

Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects more rate increases in late-2018.

Charlene Vos

2018-06-08 13:35:00 Friday ET

Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects more rate increases in late-2018.

The Federal Reserve delivers a second interest rate hike to 1.75%-2% and then expects subsequent rate increases in September and December 2018 to dampen inf

+See More

The Trump $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

Joseph Corr

2018-03-15 07:41:00 Thursday ET

The Trump $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

The Trump administration's $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike

+See More

U.S. inflation has become sustainably less than the 2% policy target in recent years.

Jonah Whanau

2019-08-03 09:28:00 Saturday ET

U.S. inflation has become sustainably less than the 2% policy target in recent years.

U.S. inflation has become sustainably less than the 2% policy target in recent years. As Harvard macro economist Robert Barro indicates, U.S. inflation has

+See More