…was designed to keep the deficit in check by requiring the administration to institute spending cuts in many mandatory federal programs if Congress passes any measure that increases the deficit…

…graph looks like this, in a three-sector presentation: The common takeaway: government deficit spending (plus/minus trade imbalances) equals private-sector “surplus.” Government deficit spending is the “source” of that private-sector surplus…

…expanded from around $60,000 ( real 2009 ) to around $70,000 ( real 2009 ) or 16%. The real trade deficit is the flip side of the federal budget deficit…

…as another piece of evidence showing that the trade deficit is driven by the imbalance between US savings and investment.  The federal deficit is negative savings so it is a…

…years after the war, hardly of the same caliber as the wartime deficits, and then it was business as usual: mostly modest deficits with the occasional surplus or breakeven year….

…of GDP, then the rule that the debt/GDP ratio must not rise implies an allowed primary deficit of (g-r)Debt (the primary deficit is the deficit not counting interest on the…

…but it warns of a coming real problem: When the Trust Fund actually runs out of money in 2035 or so, this creates the “long range actuarial deficit” which is…

In the real world, if someone spends more money than they make, they run a deficit. Income – Spending = Deficit. Accumulatively, deficits become debt. In order to avoid the…

…deficit requires a change in savings, beginning with fiscal deficits. Trump showed in his first term that he was quite willing to sacrifice fiscal solvency for a tax cut, and…

Brad DeLong and Mark Thoma posit that a falling US public deficit is bad news – they are right! Deficit hysteria is now mainstream thinking, while the more appropriate hysteria…