{"id":38809,"date":"2018-10-06T13:58:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-06T18:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38809"},"modified":"2018-10-06T13:58:55","modified_gmt":"2018-10-06T18:58:55","slug":"the-us-spent-a-record-523-billion-on-debt-interest-in-fiscal-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38809","title":{"rendered":"The US Spent A Record $523 Billion On Debt Interest In Fiscal 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The US Spent A Record $523 Billion On Debt Interest In Fiscal 2018<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Earlier this week, when the US closed fiscal 2018 on September 30, we reported <\/a>that US gross national debt jumped by $84 billion on September 28, the last business day of fiscal year 2018; with this last push higher, total gross national debt in fiscal 2018 rose by $1.271 trillion to an all time record of $21.52 trillion.<\/p>\n

What is more stunning, is that only six months ago, on March 16, it had for the first time risen above the $21-trillion mark, while a year ago, at the end of September 2017, it was just $20.2 trillion.<\/p>\n

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The reason for the soaring debt total is, of course, the runaway US budget deficit, which while providing a temporary sugar rush to the US economy comes at a cost of explosive debt. As a reminder, one month ago, the CBO revised its forecast<\/a>, and now expects the deficit will approach $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year or one year sooner than disclosed in the CBO’s most recent forecast; in April the agency didn\u2019t expect the deficit to reach $1 trillion until 2020.<\/p>\n

Many have asked if any of this actually matters in the grand scheme of things. Last week Bloomberg published a piece titled “Skyrocketing Deficit? So What, Says New Washington Consensus<\/a>” which explained\u00a0 that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered by the devastating long-term trajectory of US debt, effectively making deficit hawks an extinct species:<\/p>\n

In both parties, deficit spenders are gaining ground. That makes Year Two of the Trump administration look increasingly like end-times if you are, for example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Spent A Record $523 Billion On Debt Interest In Fiscal 2018 Earlier this week, when the US closed fiscal 2018 on September 30, we reported that US gross national debt jumped by $84 billion on September 28, the last business day of fiscal year 2018; with this last push higher, total gross national […]<\/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":[195,13992,15377,827,19481,4318],"class_list":["post-38809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-debt-payments","tag-debt-servicing","tag-united-states","tag-us-federal-budget","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38809","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=38809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38810,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38809\/revisions\/38810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}