Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Rising Burden of Government Debt

By Daniel Bergstresser Econofact Second of two commentaries on Government Debt. This commentary does mention tax policies since 2000 which reduced revenue. The latest passed in 2017 as advocated by trump and supported by Congress. It passed under Reconciliation. The failure to balance out the debt created by the tax reduction with revenue achieved through […]

US Debt, Problems, and Fixes

Discussing US Debt looked interesting enough to post on Angry Bear. I do not agree with the proposed fixes as I believe there are other fixes which would resolve the issues mentioned. Perhaps you have better ideas? Addressing Rising US Debt by Karen Dynan Econofact, The Issue: United States Federal debt rose sharply after the […]

Student Loan Crisis Would Likely Worsen Under a Second Trump Administration

I have written about student loans or have added articles about student loans to Angry Bear here, here, here, here, etc, etc, etc. I go back years on the topic as well as Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice does. Politicians resist loan forgiveness claiming students are taking advantage of the system. It is a […]

Debt and Growth III

I’m going to try to make this post brief and comprehensible.  It contains no information not in an earlier post but I delete a whole lot of distracting data. The question is does the Reinhart Rogoff (hence R-R) data set on public debt and real GDP in 20 rich countries post WWII contain evidence that a […]

The rest of the dinner table deficit/debt discussion: Equity

I promise, there are numbers here, but lets have some fun first and write a screen play to set up the point. It is long, but…   “Dear, I’m getting nervous. We seem to keep adding to how much money we owe and our income hasn’t changed for the better. What can we do?”   […]

Wealth, debt, consumption…revisited

Here are reminders of Angry Bear posts and contrbutor thinking on “Wealth, debt,and consumption”. Wealth versus income Usually my articles present facts and data and try to drive down to a conclusion. This time, I’m going to drive down to a couple of questions. Income and consumption jazzbumba Part 1…spending as a fraction of net […]

Debt and Growth

Art at The New Arthurian Economics and I are looking at the relationship between debt and economic growth.  Art started with an observation of two FRED series, total credit market debt owed (TCMDO) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP,  nominal or GDPC1, inflation adjusted – take your pick.) Graph 1, from FRED, shows these data series.  […]

Debt, Recession, and That Ol’ Devil Denominator

Krugman recently presented this graph, showing household debt as a percentage of GDP. and made this comment. Second, a dramatic rise in household debt, which many of us now believe lies at the heart of our continuing depression. There are those who seem to believe that if Krugman says it, it must be wrong.   Here […]