US Federal Debt

You should definitely pay more taxes

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And no one cares.

Senate Republicans have proposed selling off up to 3.3 million acres of federally owned land in 11 Western states, according to a draft legislative text offered as part of their spending and tax cut bill, prompting an outcry from conservationists and Democratic lawmakers.

Selling an asset (privatization ) to “make budget”. No sane business would forget to record the loss of the asset and n stead claim the cash was “revenue”.
But we do at the federal level. And it leads to laughably poor management. Until we start to correctly differentiate revenues and expenses, there is no reason to believe a balanced budget is of any value at all. And the national debt is a worthless metric.

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This has been one of my many concerns with this administration. Whatever happened to the conservationist wing of the Republican Party?

There are no wings. Just a big fat upper thigh.
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.
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No, more upper.

Fox News, the same reason as everything else, right?

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Turns out selling off US lands was also nixed by the parliamentarian

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That ended in the 1970s.

They became Democrats in partisan realignment over the past 50 years.

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Trump is now lookig to replace Powell early.

Wants to cut rates so that his bill has a smaller financial impact.

Problem is he is going to let inflation rip when rates go down and tariffs go up.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-is-considering-three-or-four-candidates-next-fed-chair-2025-06-25/

US projected deficits don’t look sustainable to me.

IMF figures:

The comparison is to averages(?) for economic regions/groups of countries rather than individual countries. Is the claim accurate if you look at member states of those groups?

It’s not accurate in any sense. There is no limit to the size of the debt.
The Neoliberal economic theory of money is just cod swallop.

If US debt service costs keep rising alongside net debt…the US dollar is not going to be able to come to the rescue even as the main reserve currency.

There are practical limits to just how much you can borrow in your own currency (even for the US).

Otherwise, you are just going to end up with rampant inflation (more money (debt) chasing a reasonably static amount of goods and services) which will then be problematic for investors (who are the ones keeping the show on the road for the moment).

Oh?
Shirley, you have a number. Shirley, some expert in Economics know the number.

The interest expense is the product of two numbers.
If the interest rate is 4%, and then the interest rate is changed to 2%, then the interest expense is halved. Simple simple.
Now who sets the interest rate? It’s the central bank of course.

So how could that big ole stack of bonds issued at higher rages go down? Well, stop issuing those bonds, let them redeem and fund the current deficit by simply crediting the banks reserves at the Fed. Beginning in 2023, May I think, Congress authorized the Fed to begin paying interest on member banks reserves held at the Fed. Those funds earn the short rate…the rate that the Fed itself sets.

This is very simplified overview, ignoring all sorts of related impacts. But the fundamental truth is the interest expense takes two numbers to calculate, and the Central Bank has pretty much a free hand at setting one of them.

As of 2025 Japan Debt/GDP - US Debt/GDP = 110%. We are at least a two-term DTJr and 4 years of Eric away from topping Japan.

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With more reserves, do the banks have more money to lend?

Unfortunately only about 25% of US debt is comprised of T bills which will mature within a year.

The Cheetolini controlled Fed chair can cut the interest rate to zero and print all the dollars they want, but we’ve seen that movie before right?

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