It’s back! It was just two weeks ago that the U.S. Congress delayed a scheduled presentation of federal government shutdown theater until the holidays, and now that the holidays have come, the U.S. Congress has… delayed what could have been a Christmas pageant episode of federal government shutdown theater for another month. Mike DeBonis…
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Last week, on February 22, 2017, President Trump spoke to the press for the first time about the budget and the national debt while attending an informal federal budget meeting at the White House. Here are some quick quotes that stood out during his introductory remarks, first off, covering his impression of the overall…
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On December 26, one day after Christmas, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner broke a blockbuster story. On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2012, the United States will reach its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit and will have to undertake “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. The debt ceiling had been troubling Steven Mufson of the Washington Post…
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Last week, Moody’s cut Greece’s credit rating to the lowest level on its scale, citing risk of default despite the recent write-off deal. Moody’s said the rating decision was “prompted by the recently announced debt exchange proposals for Greece, which imply expected losses to investors in excess of 70%.” The sovereign debt crisis in…
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I could not resist posting this beautiful graph of the current state of the momentousness US debt. The graph is particularly useful for eyeballing the historical path of U.S. debt to GDP. Often pundits will say that our current debt-to-GDP ratio is not unreasonable because it is not too high relative to the period…
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James Buchanan and Richard Wagner begin their book Democracy in Deficit by explaining that prior to the absorption of Keynesian economics, the conventional wisdom of Adam Smith prevailed. Adam Smith had observed that: “What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” This…
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The United States will officially pass the 100 percent debt-to-GDP line on Halloween. This is the first time this has ever happened since World War II. As Zero Hedge reports, We decided to dig into the actual numbers (cancelling out the per capital denominator as it is the same on both sides of the…
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In “CBO Releases Daunting Long-Term Outlook,” Tim Fernholz at the National Journal reports that: Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term…
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In the following video, Independent Institute Research Fellow Jeffery Miron discusses why federal entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) is growing to unprecedented levels and must be cut and cut and cut some more if the U.S.’s fiscal spending and debt crisis is to be resolved. HT: Mike Munger
In a new article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Grasping budget’s billions and trillions: Incomprehensibly huge numbers mask real burdens,” Independent Institute Research Fellow Emily Skarbek (Director of the Government Cost Calculator) discusses the meaning and absurdity of the $3.8 trillion federal budget and the meaningless reforms being proposed. Taxpayers might have strong feelings about…
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