Episode 242 - US Monetary Outlook
Today the gang's all here, gathered around the fireplace, eating metaphorical marshmallows as papa Karim, our resident economist, busts out the spit facts. We're going over the current economic state of the US, monetary strategies, how they affect economies and trade between them, and much, much more. So, grab a stick, poke a marshmallow and relax while Karim gets them FACTS into your brain. The U.S. Treasury Will Borrow A Record $3 Trillion This Quarter As Stimulus Spending Soars Over last two months Congress has authorized more than $3 Trillion in emergency stimulusIn order to come up with that cash the Treasury will have to issue record breaking amount of debtLast quarter, the Treasury borrowed about $500 billion, and it plans to borrow another $677 billion in the third quarter.relatively cheap to borrow with record low interest rates (10 year note yielding about 0.6%)The Treasury’s numbers only account for legislation that has been passed to date. Another stimulus package is in the worksUS Debt big picture $25 Trillion threshold crossed, $7 trillion in the last 5 yearsAccording to data from the US Treasury growth is$1.2 million per minute$1.7+ billion per dayNational Debt Clock Every 15 secs our tax revenue is falling by like 100kDebt per citizen $75,600Per Tax payer though that’s $200,000Currency Creation (M2 Money supply) +$100,000 every few secondsWho owns that debt? Majority of US debt owned by Americans (investors, fed, banks).30% owned by foreign entitiesChina and Japan more than 1 Trillion eachDebt to GDP 2019 -publicly held federal debt was almost 80% percent, $17 trillionAccording to CBO estimates then, debt was already rising faster than the economy and was projected to reach 98% by 2030now at 107% and projected to 108% by 2021, our record was 106% year after WWIIAnother chart shows Gross debt to GDP after WWII at around 118%Checked again this morning on Nat debt clock, looks like we broke this barrier as of 5/21 119.08%Saw this back of envelope simplifications 35m to 1 reduction US as household Income - 100k p/yrDebt - $714kUnfunded liabilities (medicare,SS,VA) - $4.2mInternational perspective 06-18FWIW Trump said if he gets re-elected he’ll wipe the debt =) he said that last time too and it was +5Trillion going into this (last time we cleared the debt was Andrew Jackson 1835) Interesting quote though to keep this in perspective - “If the Fed didn’t take these and other emergency measures, “the system already would have blown up,The markets would have crashed 10 times over.” - Tim Duy University of Oregon (Economist, US Treasury) Modern Monetary Theory, Is there a limit? MTT points out a government that controls its own currency can't default on debtBut defecit + interest rates increase outstanding debt, is there a limit?Sustainability does not require the government deficit to be zero, or surplusesit requires that the debt increase at the same rate, or more slowly than, GDP growthParts of MMT rely on the President and Congress to fight, at some point, the inflation created by money printingby either tax increases or reducing government spending.But this ignores the political realities that easy for fed to print, but hard for politicians to tax more or cut spendingMMT also "ignores distributional effects of paying for borrowing"Essentially MMT tends to consider debt payment as occruing between two players within the economyAs we mentioned before, irl USA has 30% of debt owned by foreign entitiesInterest payments to those investors reduce the income flowing to U.S. residents, making Americans less well off.This would be justifiable if today’s spending raised income and living standards in the futureSo this is not just a problem of scale, but of allocationHere is the catch 22 If we keep creating money, there is going to be inflation unless we raise interest rates (which makes borrowing /spending more expensive)“too much money chasing too few goods”If we raise interest rates, we exacerbate t
