{"id":28440,"date":"2017-11-30T07:18:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T12:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28440"},"modified":"2017-11-30T07:18:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T12:18:26","slug":"us-gross-national-debt-jumps-723-billion-in-12-weeks-yellen-very-worried-about-sustainability-of-us-debt-trajectory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28440","title":{"rendered":"US Gross National Debt Jumps $723 billion in 12 Weeks, Yellen \u201cVery Worried about Sustainability of US Debt Trajectory\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Gross National Debt Jumps $723 billion in 12 Weeks, Yellen \u201cVery Worried about Sustainability of US Debt Trajectory\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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But only a few lost souls in Congress care.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even as lawmakers are trying to cobble together a tax-cut bill that would cut revenues by $1.5 trillion over ten years, the gross national debt has spiked $723 billion over the past 12 weeks since Congress suspended the \u201cdebt ceiling.\u201d It just hit $20.57 trillion, or 105% of GDP.<\/p>\n

Over the past six years, since November 2011, the gross national debt has surged nearly 40%, or by $5.8 trillion. Back in 2011, gross national debt amounted to 95% of GDP. Before the Financial Crisis, it was at 63% of GDP. There are no signs that the relentless rise in the debt is slowing down. On the contrary \u2013 the tax cuts are going to steepen the curve:<\/p>\n

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In the chart above, note the last three debt-ceiling fights \u2013 the flat lines in 2013, 2015, and 2017, followed each time by an enormous spike when the debt ceiling was lifted or suspended, and when the \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d with which the Treasury keeps the government afloat were reversed.<\/p>\n

And the Fed is getting increasingly nervous about the \u201csustainability\u201d of this debt.<\/p>\n

There are only a few lawmakers left in Congress that have a sense of fiscal responsibility. One of the lost souls is Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, who, to address his anxieties about the deficit and the debt, wants to add a provision to the tax-cut bill that would raise taxes automatically if the economy doesn\u2019t hit certain growth targets in the future. This \u201ctrigger\u201d is designed to slow by a smidgen the relentless rise of the national debt. He has come under withering criticism for it from Republican lawmakers and conservative lobbying groups.<\/p>\n

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

US Gross National Debt Jumps $723 billion in 12 Weeks, Yellen \u201cVery Worried about Sustainability of US Debt Trajectory\u201d But only a few lost souls in Congress care. Even as lawmakers are trying to cobble together a tax-cut bill that would cut revenues by $1.5 trillion over ten years, the gross national debt has spiked […]<\/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":[303,451,3650,15682,4254,4255,4069],"class_list":["post-28440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-fed","tag-janet-yellen","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-us-gross-national-debt","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet","tag-yellen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28440","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=28440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28441,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28440\/revisions\/28441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}