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

State, society, and the narrow corridor to liberty

Joseph Corr

2023-09-28 08:26:00 Thursday ET

State, society, and the narrow corridor to liberty

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson show a constant economic tussle between society and the state in the hot pursuit of liberty. Daron Acemoglu and James R

+See More

Fed Chair Janet Yellen confirms with her successor Jerome Powell the final interest rate hike in December 2017.

Joseph Corr

2017-12-14 12:41:00 Thursday ET

Fed Chair Janet Yellen confirms with her successor Jerome Powell the final interest rate hike in December 2017.

Federal Reserve raises the interest rate by 25 basis points to the target range of 1.25% to 1.5% as FOMC members revise up their GDP estimate from 2% to 2.5

+See More

President Trump seeks to honor his campaign promise of lower U.S. medical costs by forcing higher big-pharma prices in foreign countries.

Charlene Vos

2018-05-07 07:32:00 Monday ET

President Trump seeks to honor his campaign promise of lower U.S. medical costs by forcing higher big-pharma prices in foreign countries.

President Trump seeks to honor his campaign promise of lower U.S. medical costs by forcing higher big-pharma prices in foreign countries such as Canada, Bri

+See More

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

Peter Prince

2017-03-09 05:32:00 Thursday ET

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

From 1927 to 2017, the U.S. stock market has delivered a hefty average return of about 11% per annum. The U.S. average stock market return is high in stark

+See More

Uber seeks an IPO in close competition with its rideshare rival Lyft and other tech firms such as Slack, Pinterest, and Palantir.

Amy Hamilton

2019-03-13 12:35:00 Wednesday ET

Uber seeks an IPO in close competition with its rideshare rival Lyft and other tech firms such as Slack, Pinterest, and Palantir.

Uber seeks an IPO in close competition with its rideshare rival Lyft and other tech firms such as Slack, Pinterest, and Palantir. Uber expects to complete o

+See More

Tech titans from Apple and Amazon to Microsoft and Google can benefit from the G.O.P. tax reform.

James Campbell

2017-12-07 08:31:00 Thursday ET

Tech titans from Apple and Amazon to Microsoft and Google can benefit from the G.O.P. tax reform.

Large multinational tech firms such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon can benefit much from the G.O.P. tax reform. A recent stock research r

+See More