A partial of a nice read on the US Federal Debt which will more than likely increase as this President and Congress will wish to make Trump’s 2017 tax break passed under reconciliation permanent. The issue being, it did not promote increased revenue which would have balanced out the deficit created. It (the issue) goes […]

Part III – How to think about time series data. For reference:Part II  Federal Spending as a Fraction of GDP Part I  Federal Spending Growth Some commentors to the previous posts have rightly concluded that I consider spending under Obama in the context of historical trends.  In fact, if you don’t consider historical trends, you […]

A post like this really shouldn’t be necessary, but part of the right wing canard that Obama has been a profligate spender is based on spending as a percentage of GDP. It looks like this – Graph 1. Graph 1.  Fed Expenditures/GDP Sure enough, by the end of Clinton’s term the ratio had fallen from […]

Jonathon Portes on macroeconomics and the deficit: As we all know, since then both the US and UK have had deficits running at historically extremely high levels, and long-term interest rates at historic lows: as Krugman has repeatedly pointed out, the (IS-LM) textbook has been spot on.  Empirically (and theoretically) well-founded? Definitely.  As Simon Wren-Lewis points […]