{"id":20444,"date":"2016-05-06T05:40:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T10:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20444"},"modified":"2016-05-06T05:45:13","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T10:45:13","slug":"jim-grant-asks-when-the-world-will-realize-that-central-bankers-have-lost-their-marbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20444","title":{"rendered":"Jim Grant Asks When The World Will Realize “That Central Bankers Have Lost Their Marbles”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Grant Asks When The World Will Realize “That Central Bankers Have Lost Their Marbles”<\/a><\/h3>\n
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April 15 comes and goes but the federal debt stays and grows.\u00a0<\/strong>The secrets of its life force are the topics at hand\u2014 that and some guesswork about how the upsurge in financial leverage, private and public alike, may bear on the value of the dollar and on the course of monetary affairs.\u00a0Skipping down to the bottom line, we judge that the government\u2019s money is a short sale.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Diminishing returns is the essential problem of the debt: Past a certain level of encumbrance, a marginal dollar of borrowing loses its punch<\/strong>. There\u2019s a moral dimension to the problem as well. There would be less debt if people were more angelic. Non-angels, the taxpayers underpay, the bureaucrats over-remit and everyone averts his gaze from the looming titanic cost of future medical entitlements. Topping it all is 21st-century monetary policy, which fosters the credit formation that leads to the debt dead end.\u00a0The debt dead end may, in fact, be upon us now. A monetary dead end could follow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As to sin, Americans surrender, in full and on time, 83% of what they owe, according to the IRS\u2014or they did between the years 2001 and 2006, the latest period for which America\u2019s most popular federal agency has sifted data. In 2006, the IRS reckons, American filers, both individuals and corporations, paid $450 billion less than they owed. They underreported $376 billion, underpaid $46 billion and kept mum about (\u201cnonfiled\u201d) $28 billion. Recoveries, through late payments or enforcement actions, reduced that gross deficiency to a net \u201ctax gap\u201d of $385 billion.<\/p>\n

This was in 2006, when federal tax receipts footed to $2.31 trillion. Ten\u00a0 years later, the U.S. tax take is expected to reach $3.12 trillion.<\/strong>Proportionally, the 2006 gross tax gap would translate to $607.7 billion, and the net tax gap to $520 billion.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Grant Asks When The World Will Realize “That Central Bankers Have Lost Their Marbles” April 15 comes and goes but the federal debt stays and grows.\u00a0The secrets of its life force are the topics at hand\u2014 that and some guesswork about how the upsurge in financial leverage, private and public alike, may bear on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7735,130,1654,3325,285,13733,9928,6038,1167,1512,1464,451,452,7863,3074,534,7523,6421,4696,13734,13735,4318],"class_list":["post-20444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cato-institute","tag-china","tag-congressional-budget-office","tag-creditors","tag-eurozone","tag-federal-deficit","tag-federal-tax","tag-fixed","tag-greece","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-janet-yellen","tag-japan","tag-jim-grant","tag-medicare","tag-monetary-policy","tag-nominal-gdp","tag-pimco","tag-portugal","tag-private-domestic-investment","tag-van-hoisington","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20446,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20444\/revisions\/20446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}