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Here’s one that will make your hair stand on end: The US Treasury closed the books on FY 2023, bringing the four-year cumulative deficit to $9.0 trillion!

That’s right. During the last 1,461 days (FY 2020 thru FY 2023), Uncle Sam has generated $6.2 billion of red ink each and every day including weekends, holidays and snow-days. For anyone keeping score at home, that’s $4.2 million of red ink per minute.

For the purpose of perspective, here’s how long it took to generate the first $9 trillion of US government debt: It took all of 43 presidents and 219 years to reach $9 trillion of public debt in July 2007. So the national debt clock has now accelerated to hyper-drive.

Market Value of Public Debt Outstanding, 1940 to July 2007

And, yes, we do mean accelerate. It turns out that when you remove the budgetary Mickey Mouse from the numbers, the federal deficit for FY 2023 clocked in at over $2.0 trillion, or double the comparable level in FY 2022. The reported numbers, of course, do not look quite as alarming, posting at $1.4 trillion last year and $1.7 trillion this year.

But as The Wall Street Journal cogently explained recently, that comparison is very misleading because it includes a $380 billion budgetary shuffle between the two years. It seems that Sleepy Joe’s student debt cancellation got recorded as a cost in September 2022, but then got canceled by the courts in FY 2023, turning it into a giant “savings”!

When the Biden administration announced its plan to forgive federal student debt held by 40 million Americans in September 2022, it logged the long-term cost of the program, $379 billion, on the budget all at once, even though effectively no money was spent on it that year… But in June 2023, the Supreme Court tossed the debt-cancellation program, meaning most of that money wouldn’t actually be spent. Rather than update last year’s deficit numbers, though, the Treasury recorded the changes as a $333 billion spending cut in August 2023.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Abuse of Public Debt–And How It Sets the Stage For Economic Disaster

June 8, 2021

THE ABUSE OF PUBLIC DEBT—AND HOW IT SETS THE STAGE FOR ECONOMIC DISASTER

The 2020–21 recession has been devastating for the global economy. It has been ninety years since the global economy last suffered through a recession of this magnitude (in the Great Depression). Nonetheless, it seems that the social effects of the current recession have not yet come about. The reason for this disparity between cold macroeconomic data and popular sentiment can be found in the enormous public spending by practically all of the countries in the world.1

In a previous article, we explored the enormous expansion of public debt in the world that resulted from the Great Lockdown of 2020

This article argues that exorbitant increases in public debt, such as those seen in 2020, are not free. It examines the potential economic effects of accumulating vast quantities of public debt.

The First Problem: Less Economic Growth

The countries with the greatest amount of public debt saw per capita income grow the least, as seen in chart 1.

Chart 1: GDP Growth per Capita

Source: Kumar and Woo. Created with Datawrapper

The economic mechanism that explains this statistical relationship is relatively simple. An excessive public debt causes the so-called expulsion effect, in which credit is redirected from the private sector to the public sector. The growth of public debt deprives the private sector of loanable funds, reducing the generation of wealth. (It is the private sector that generates economic activity. The most the public sector can aspire to do is to establish a framework that favors private endeavors.)

The Second Problem: Disincentivizing Investment and Reducing Productivity

This second problem is an extension of the first. One of the best indicators of an economy’s future growth is its investment rate. When investment increases, so too does productivity, which is accompanied by economic growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Public v Private Interest Rates & Sovereign Debt Crisis

June 13, 2019

Public v Private Interest Rates & Sovereign Debt Crisis

QUESTION: Dear Martin I have a question for the blog. There has been forecasts for a sovereign debt crisis but recently you have discussed how various governments may manipulate govt bond interest rates down as has happened in Europe and Japan. If Europe and Japan are anything to go by then this could go on for some time. If govts are successful in this, does this mean that there may not be a sovereign debt crisis?

ANSWER: The Sovereign Debt Crisis involves crossing the line where the private sector no longer trusts government debt. We have begun to cross that line in Europe and Japan where the central banks are buying the debt in bulk. There have even been German auctions of bonds where there was no bid.

Yes, the central banks can artificially keep government interest rates low, but that is only possible when they are the buyers.

We are already experiencing rising interest rates in the peripheral governments where their central banks do not engage in QE — namely emerging markets. We will witness private rates rise for that is a free market. However, from the government side of the table, the Sovereign Debt Crisis is among the developed countries engaging in QE that has unfolded as there is NO BID. They can artificially keep rates low ONLY because the central banks buy the debt. Nobody in the private sector would buy 10 years paper at 1% to 3% when they need 8% to break even in pension funds.

Also, pay attention to the state/provincial debt where they do not have the ability to buy their own nonsense. The manipulation of rates will be at the federal level, not in the state/provincial and municipal levels of government.

So, pay attention to the bifurcation in rates that is unfolding between PUBLIC v PRIVATE.

China’s ‘zombie’ companies are a big threat to the economy — and JPMorgan says their debt pile means the country could be slowing faster than anyone thought

February 4, 2019

China’s ‘zombie’ companies are a big threat to the economy — and JPMorgan says their debt pile means the country could be slowing faster than anyone thought

china guard zombie monster — JPMorgan says China should get rid of its “zombie” state-owned companies.

China’s economy is beset by huge public and corporate debt problems which threaten to derail the country’s growth story, according to JPMorgan.
Economic growth in China has been steadily slowing and could get even lower meaning the world’s second largest economy won’t overtake the US any time soon.
The key risk — disposing of “zombie” state-owned companies — means the economy could be forced to adopt a zero interest policy, JPMorgan said.

The US-China trade war is in more of the headlines, but there’s an even greater problem for the world’s second largest economy.

“The biggest concern regarding financial stability and the sustainability of economic growth has been China’s ballooning debt problem, especially in the co rporate sector,” according to a note published by JPMorgan.

Chinese corporate debt is among the highest in the world — it’s a stunning 162% of GDP.

The country’s debt will take serious and prolonged policy changes to rectify, said the economists led by Chief China economist Haibin Zhu. China’s slowdown comes alongside other economic red flags — from its economy including poor PMI figures, lower exports, an aging workforce, and spiralling household debt.

JPMorgan pushes back on estimates that China will soon overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy, predicting that China’s growth potential will slow from the current 6.5% level to 5.5% in 2021 through 2025 and 4.5% in 2026 through 2030.

“This means that China will remain the second largest economy much longer than expected,” the economists said.

“The transition to slower potential growth could be volatile and requires balancing reforms,” they wrote. “This will reshape China’s role in the global economy.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Public Debt Is a Problem — And Trade Deficits Aren’t

October 28, 2018

Why Public Debt Is a Problem — And Trade Deficits Aren’t

As the U.S. trade deficit has been widening for the fourth month running, markets and business experts appear once again bewildered by the events and unsure how to react to them. On the one hand, they had vehemently opposed the increase in trade tariffs and the trade war that has made headlines this year. But on the other hand, they now find that U.S. trade deficit reaching its largest level on record — the precise deficit tariffs purported to narrow — is very worrying. Furthermore, as they scramble to adjust their costs and production plans to the increasing uncertainty of world trade relations — including here not only U.S.’s trade disputes with China, but also UK’s planned exit from the EU and the fraught relationships at the WTO — global companies are also paying less attention to the Fed’s and other central banks’ monetary policies.

It is not hard to see why they are confused. Political turmoil is bound to make navigation of global markets much more difficult, and smooth planning almost impossible. At the same time, the fallacy that trade deficits are detrimental to a nation in and of themselves is very deeply rooted in public opinion. By comparison, government deficits and easy monetary policies — the real culprit behind eroding wealth and falling purchasing power — get a lot less bad press than they deserve.

It is thus worth reminding ourselves that trade deficits themselves are not at all problematic. As Mises (2009, 448) explained:

While an individual’s balance of payments conveys exhaustive information about his social position, a group’s balance discloses much less. It says nothing about the mutual relations between the members of the group. The greater the group is and the less homogeneous its members are, the more defective is the information vouchsafed by the balance of payments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italian debt; a financial disaster waiting to happen

July 3, 2018

Italian debt; a financial disaster waiting to happen

The new Italian government will increase public spending and public debt. It promised to reduce taxes, introduce basic security and reform pensions. Italy’s Northern League’s leader Mateo Salvini surged in the polls and the party is now the strongest in Italy. A couple of years ago it was inconceivable that this regional group could become Italy’s leading political party. We should expect more to come. As the saying goes, it just could not happen till it happened. The financial establishments in North European countries like Germany and the Netherlands assume that the politicians of M5S and Lega Nord will follow the Greek script and will backtrack on their promises. But Mateo Salvini and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte know that if they do not live up to the expectation of the voters, they will be voted out of office. They are also aware of it that the Italian voter has still another alternative called “CasaPound”, a much more radical, if for the time being insignificant, social and anti-migration movement.

The planned reforms could burden the state budget with an additional 125 billion euros per year. Can the Italian government afford such a thing?¹⁾

The question is rhetorical when you look at Italy’s growing debt mountain.

It amounts to €2300 billion, of which 1900 billion are government bonds. What should worry investors, however, is the structure of this debt. Ten years ago, when the last financial crisis broke out, 51% of these government bonds were hold by foreign investors. When the climate for investment in a country deteriorates, they sell these bonds immediately. When in 2011 the Berlusconi government threatened to withdraw from the eurozone budget rules because of the huge budget deficit, German and French banks sold Italian government bonds BTP (Buoni del Tesoro Poliennali) worth a total of €150 billion. In the following years, foreigners bought Italian debt instruments again for around €100 billion, but their share is now very low at 36%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Does Government Spending Create More Economic Growth?

September 5, 2017

Does Government Spending Create More Economic Growth?

After the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, fears of ballooning public debt and worries about the drag on economic growth pushed authorities in some countries to lower government spending, a tactic that economists now think may have slowed recovery. Note that in the United States the total debt to GDP ratio stood at 349 in Q1 this year.

In a paper presented at the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual economic symposium on August 26 2017, Alan Auerbach and Yuriy Gorodnichenko from the University of California suggested that “expansionary fiscal policies adopted when the economy is weak may not only stimulate output but also reduce debt-to-GDP ratios”. (Fiscal Stimulus and Fiscal Sustainability, August 1,2017, UC – Berkley and NBER).

Some commentators are of the view that these findings may be welcome news to central bankers who face limited options of their own to combat a future downturn, given existing low interest rates and low inflation rates in their economies. “With tight constraints on central banks, one may expect — or maybe hope for — a more active response of fiscal policy when the next recession arrives,” the University of California researchers wrote.

These findings are in agreement with Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman, and other commentators that are of the view that an increase in government outlays whilst the economy is relatively subdued is good news for economic growth.

Can increase in government outlays strengthen economic growth?

Observe that government is not a wealth generating entity as such — the more it spends, the more resources it has to take from wealth generators. This in turn undermines the wealth generating process of the economy.

The proponents for strong government outlays when an economy displays weakness hold that the stronger outlays by the government will strengthen the spending flow and this in turn will strengthen the economy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Myth Of ‘Morning In America’—–How The Public Debt Went From $1 Trillion to $35 Trillion in Four Decades, Part 1

September 2, 2016

The Myth Of ‘Morning In America’—–How The Public Debt Went From $1 Trillion to $35 Trillion in Four Decades, Part 1

I have finished my book on the upheaval represented by the Trump candidacy and movement. It will be published soon, and is an exploration of how 30 years of Bubble Finance policies at the Fed, feckless interventions abroad and mushrooming Big government and debt at home have brought America to its current ruinous condition.

It also delves into the good and bad of the Trump campaign and platform and outlines a more consistent way forward based on free markets, fiscal rectitude, sound money, constitutional liberty, non-intervention abroad, minimalist government at home and decentralized political rule.

In order to complete the manuscript on a timely basis, I will not be doing daily posts for the next week or two. Instead, I will post excerpts from the book that crystalize its key themes and which also relate to the on-going gong show in the presidential campaigns and in the financial and economic arenas. Another of these is included below.

I am also working with my partners at Agora Financial on a new version of Contra Corner. More information on that will be coming soon.

Trumped Final

………One of the great virtues of the Trump candidacy is The Donald’s propensity to lob wild pitches—knowingly or not—at the sacred cows of Imperial Washington, thereby exposing the tissue of hypocrisy and can’t, which surrounds them.

But within the herd of revered ruminants none is slathered in more hypocrisy than the federal budget and official Washington’s unctuous professions of devotion to safeguarding the “full faith and credit of the United States.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Japanese Ponzi Scheme?

June 23, 2016

A Japanese Ponzi Scheme?

TOKYO – In the early years of the twentieth century, Charles Ponzi, an Italian migrant to North America, had a seemingly brilliant moneymaking idea. He would offer huge returns on worthless investments, thereby convincing a growing number of people to give him their money, which was used, in lieu of profit, to pay off earlier investors. Ponzi’s eponymous scheme was essentially a way to enable businesses to rack up debt forever. But, of course, it was ultimately just a scam – and, indeed, it landed Ponzi in prison.

A century later, pyramid schemes like Ponzi’s are still regarded as fraud, at least when they are pursued by private businesses. Yet few seem to recognize the role such schemes play in the public sector. In fact, governments in many countries, including the United States and Japan, survive on what are essentially Ponzi schemes.

Of course, there are crucial differences. A traditional private-sector Ponzi scheme, despite its potential short-run returns, always breaks down for a simple reason: the number of potential investors is finite. But in a government-run Ponzi scheme, the investor is the taxpayer. And a stable government, with all the coercive means at its disposal, can reasonably expect to continue collecting taxes, which it can use to repay its earlier debts, for generations to come.

But the fact that a public-sector Ponzi scheme can be sustained for a longer time does not make it foolproof. Excessive public debt weighs down an economy, leaving it vulnerable to shocks. Given this, many analysts have called for aligning the rules for public debt more closely with those governing the private sector. Yet it is important to take a nuanced approach.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Could there be a coup in Turkey?

March 27, 2016

Could there be a coup in Turkey?

The situation in Turkey is bad and getting worse. It’s not just the deterioration in security amidst a wave of terrorism. Public debt might be stable, but private debt is out-of-control, the tourism sector is in free-fall, and the decline in the currency has impacted every citizen’s buying power. There is a broad sense, election results notwithstanding, that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is out-of-control. He is imprisoning opponents, seizing newspapers left and right, and building palaces at the rate of a mad sultan or aspiring caliph. In recent weeks, he has once again threatened to dissolve the constitutional court. Corruption is rife. His son Bilal reportedly fled Italy on a forged Saudi diplomatic passport as the Italian police closed in on him in an alleged money laundering scandal. His outbursts are raising eyebrows both in Turkey and abroad. Even members of his ruling party whisper about his increasing paranoia which, according to some Turkish officials, has gotten so bad that he seeks to install anti-aircraft missiles at his palace to prevent airborne men-in-black from targeting him in a snatch-and-grab operation.

Pedestrians walk along Istiklal street, a major shopping and tourist district, in central Istanbul, Turkey March 20, 2016, a day after a suicide bomb attack. REUTERS/Osman Orsal.

Turks — and the Turkish military — increasingly recognize that Erdoğan is taking Turkey to the precipice. By first bestowing legitimacy upon imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan with renewed negotiations and then precipitating renewed conflict, he has taken Turkey down a path in which there is no chance of victory and a high chance of de facto partition. After all, if civil war renews as in the 1980s and early 1990s, Turkey’s Kurds will be hard-pressed to settle for anything less, all the more so given the precedent now established by their brethren in Iraq and Syria.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where Negative Interest Rates Will Lead Us

March 3, 2016

WHERE NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES WILL LEAD US

Despite zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP) and multiple quantitative easing programs — whereby the central bank buys large quantities of assets while leaving interest rates at practically zero — the world’s economies are stuck in the doldrums. The central banks’ only accomplishment seems to be an increase in public and private debt. Therefore, the next step for the Keynesian economists who rule central banks everywhere is to make interest rates negative (i.e., adopt negative-interest-rate-policy or “NIRP.”) The process can be as simple as the central bank charging its member banks for holding excess reserves, although the same thing can be accomplished by more roundabout methods such as manipulating the reverse repo market.

Remember, it was the central bank itself that created these excess reserves when it purchased assets with money created out of thin air. The reserves landed in bank reserve accounts at the central bank when the recipients of the central bank’s asset purchases deposited their checks in their local banks. Now the banks have liabilities that are backed by depreciating assets (i.e., the banks still owe their customers the full amount in their checking accounts), but the central bank charges the banks for holding the reserves that back the deposits. In effect, the banks are being extorted by the central banks to increase lending or lose money. The banks have no choice. If they can’t find worthy borrowers, they must charge their customers for the privilege of having money in their checking accounts. Or, as is happening in some European banks, the banks try to increase loan rates to current borrowers in order to cover the added cost.

In European countries where NIRP reigns, so far, the banks are charging only large account holders for their deposits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shocking, Little-Known Facts About Debt

November 12, 2015

Shocking, Little-Known Facts About Debt

Both liberals and conservatives assume they have a rough idea of how much “the debt” is. But the real numbers are shocking …

Public Debt Is Soaring

Global debt has soared to $199 trillion dollars.

The debt to GDP ratio for the entire world is 286%. In other words, global debt is almost 3 times the size of the world economy. (William Banzai sarcastically suggests we send out a space beacon asking aliens to bail us out.)

The Hill reports:

The former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion.

Dave Walker, who headed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said when you add up all of the nation’s unfunded liabilities, the national debt is more than three times the number generally advertised.

***

“If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent reforms ….”

But former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and current Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff says that – when unfunded liabilities are taken into account – the fiscal gap for the U.S. is actually 3 times higher … $205 trillion.

Many states are also deeply in the red … For example:

Illinois faces a $9 billion dollar annual deficit and $159 billion in IOUs

New Jersey faces a structural deficit of $10.2 billion dollars

Pennsylvania has to deal with a $2.3 billion budget deficit

Wisconsin is running a $2.2 billion dollar deficit

And unfunded pension debts of the states collectively total between $1.4 trillion (according to Federal Reserve figures) and more than $3 trillion dollars (according to a Stanford finance professor).

Europe is in poor shape as well. For example:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Krugman’s Dopey Diatribe Deifying The Public Debt

August 23, 2015

Krugman’s Dopey Diatribe Deifying The Public Debt

Actually, dopey does not even begin to describe Paul Krugman’s latest spot of tommyrot. But least it appear that the good professor is being caricaturized, here are his own words. In a world drowning in government debt what we desperately need, by golly, is more of the same:

That is, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt.

Yes, indeed. There is currently about $60 trillion of public debt outstanding on a worldwide basis compared to less than $20 trillion at the turn of the century. But somehow this isn’t enough, even though the gain in public debt——-from the US to Europe, Japan, China, Brazil and the rest of the debt saturated EM world—–actually exceeds the $35 billion growth of global GDP during the last 15 years.

But rather than explain why economic growth in most of the world is slowing to a crawl despite this unprecedented eruption of public debt, Krugman chose to smack down one of his patented strawmen. Noting that Rand Paul had lamented that 1835 was the last time the US was “debt free”, the Nobel prize winner offered up a big fat non sequitir:

Wags quickly noted that the U.S. economy has, on the whole, done pretty well these past 180 years, suggesting that having the government owe the private sector money might not be all that bad a thing. The British government, by the way, has been in debt for more than three centuries, an era spanning the Industrial Revolution, victory over Napoleon, and more.

Neither Rand Paul nor any other fiscal conservative ever said that public debt per se would freeze economic growth or technological progress hard in the horse and boggy age. The question is one of degree and of whether at today’s unprecedented public debt levels we get economic growth—–even at a tepid rate—–in spite of rather than because of soaring government debt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Thomas Piketty on the Euro Zone: ‘We Have Created a Monster’

March 11, 2015

Thomas Piketty on the Euro Zone: ‘We Have Created a Monster’

SPIEGEL: You publicly rejoiced over Alexis Tsipras’ election victory in Greece. What do you think the chances are that the European Union and Athens will agree on a path to resolve the crisis?

Piketty: The way Europe behaved in the crisis was nothing short of disastrous. Five years ago, the United States and Europe had approximately the same unemployment rate and level of public debt. But now, five years later, it’s a different story: Unemployment has exploded here in Europe, while it has declined in the United States. Our economic output remains below the 2007 level. It has declined by up to 10 percent in Spain and Italy, and by 25 percent in Greece.

SPIEGEL: The new leftist government in Athens hasn’t exactly gotten off to an impressive start. Do you seriously believe that Prime Minister Tsipras can revive the Greek economy?

Piketty: Greece alone won’t be able to do anything. It has to come from France, Germany and Brussels. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) already admitted three years ago thatthe austerity policies had been taken too far. The fact that the affected countries were forced to reduce their deficit in much too short a time had a terrible impact on growth. We Europeans, poorly organized as we are, have used our impenetrable political instruments to turn the financial crisis, which began in the United States, into a debt crisis. This has tragically turned into a crisis of confidence across Europe.

SPIEGEL: European governments have tried to avert the crisis by implementing numerous reforms. What do mean when you refer to impenetrable political instruments?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brazil’s Economy Is On The Verge Of Total Collapse

January 30, 2015

Brazil’s Economy Is On The Verge Of Total Collapse

Back when the BRICs were the source of marginal global growth, the punditry couldn’t stop praising them. However, in the past year, now that China’s housing bubble has burst and its shadow banking system has imploded, those who remember what BRIC actually stood for are about as rare as those who recall what it means for the Fed to hike rates. Which is precisely why nobody in the mainstream financial media has commented on the absolutely abysmal economic update reported earlier today out Brazil.

We are happy to do so because today’s data follows up quite well to our article from a month ago “Brazil’s Economy Just Imploded” and as the earlier article on the crashing Brazilian Real hinted, things for the Brazilian economy how gone from imploding to, well, worse because not only did the twin fiscal and current account deficits rise even more, hitting a whopping 11% of GDP – the worst since August 1999, but its government debt soared to 63.4% in 2014, up from 56.7% a year ago, and the highest since at least 2006. In short – the entire economy is now on the verge of total collapse.

This is what happened in a few bullet points:

The fiscal picture has deteriorated very sharply since 2011 at both the flow (fiscal deficit) and stock (gross public debt) levels. The primary and overall nominal fiscal surpluses at year-end 2014 were at levels last seen in the late 1990s.
The steady decline of the public sector savings rate is leading to a wider current account deficit despite weaker growth and low investment. In fact, the twin fiscal and current account deficits are now tracking at a combined, very troublesome 10.9% of GDP, the worst picture in 15 years (since August 1999). Repairing the severely unbalanced macro picture would require a deep, structural and permanent fiscal and quasi-fiscal adjustment and a significantly weaker BRL.
The new economic team faces, among other things, the very significant challenge of repairing the severely deteriorated fiscal picture.
The steady erosion of the fiscal stance pushed net and gross public debt up. Furthermore, fiscal and quasi-fiscal activism undermined the effectiveness of monetary policy, contributed to keep inflation very high and drove the current account deficit to a very high level despite weak growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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The First Problem: Less Economic Growth

Source: Kumar and Woo. Created with Datawrapper

The Second Problem: Disincentivizing Investment and Reducing Productivity

Public Debt Is Soaring

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