Saturday 20th of April 2024
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driven by the smell of debt...

dollop

The Trump administration will borrow about $769 billion before the end of the year. Critics say it’s all about the tax cuts.

US government borrowing needs will total $329 billion between July and September of 2018, according to a Monday Treasury Department report obtained by Bloomberg. That figure is 74 percent higher than the $189 billion borrowed in the same timespan a year ago, the report says.

The government will need another $440 billion between October and the end of the year, making the total figure $769 billion — the highest borrowing level since 2008.

During that year, the Obama administration, dealing with the global financial crisis and the deep recession that ensued, had to borrow a whopping $1.1 trillion between July and December.

 

According to an announcement by the administration of US President Donald Trump earlier in July, this year's deficit will total $890 billion, $17 billion more than earlier estimations and significantly more than the Congressional Budget Office's prediction of $793 billion.

The deficit is expected to rise to $1.1 trillion in 2019 and stay there until 2021, when it is projected to fall, the report says.

Trump's critics say the skyrocketing deficit is a consequence of the $1.5 billion in tax cuts the president pushed Congress to approve last year. Trump's opponents argue that, with the US' low unemployment and strong economic growth, large tax cuts will drive deficits higher, which might force the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates in order to curb inflation.

However, the administration has countered that the booming economy will soon boost government revenue and reduce the deficit. According to a report by the US Commerce Department published on Friday, the US economy expanded at a rate of 4.1 percent in the previous quarter, which is the highest growth rate since the 5.2 percent mark posted in the third quarter of 2014, according to The Hill.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201808011066837997-usa-budget-deficit-borrow/

Illegal? "almost certainly"?...

EDITORIAL



Trump’s Crony Capitalists Plot a New Heist


Mnuchin floats a plan to hand $100 billion in capital gains tax savings to his superrich friends.

 

It’s almost certainly illegal.

 

------------------------

 

"Almost certainly" is not quite there... is it?

it's only money...


A leading economist and former senior Federal Reserve official has given Sputnik his take on this week's announcement by the Treasury Department that US national debt had surpassed the $22 trillion mark.

The US's record-breaking debt is not a threat to US or global economic stability, at least not for the moment, Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former visiting associate director of the division of monetary affairs at the US Federal Reserve Board has said.

"The national debt is far from a dangerous level," Gagnon said in a written commentary for Sputnik.

"We seem to be in a world with low interest rates for a long time, which keeps the debt burden low. That does not mean it's good, just less bad than it would have been 40 years ago," Gagnon explained.

According to the economist, the spiraling US debt has been the result of many factors, including former President George W. Bush's tax cuts, the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which prompted the Obama administration to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in the form of stimulus, "and now Trump's further tax cuts."

 

The Trump tax cuts are expected to run the budget close to $2 trillion over a ten year period, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Trump's "spending plans are harder to estimate because Congress will modify them and they may change over time, but it is fair to say they contribute less to the debt than the tax changes," Gagnon said.

"My main criticism of the president's tax cuts is that they went almost entirely to the rich and the rich already got most of the benefits of economic growth for more than 20 years now," the economist added.

The US National debt has grown by over $2 trillion under President Trump during his first two years in office. On the campaign trail in 2016, the billionaire real estate magnate promised to eliminate the debt over eight years by creating jobs and renegotiating US trade deals with countries like China.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201902131072394430-us-22-trillion-debt-expert/

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

Meanwhile:

A record 7 million American drivers are experiencing serious difficulties with car payments, even though the national unemployment rate has sunk and the economy is supposedly blazing its way to new heights.

The number of Americans who are more than three months behind on their car payments reached 7 million this year, a new record that surpasses the 6 million consumers who were "seriously delinquent" on payments in 2010, according to statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (The Fed considers consumers 90 days past their payment deadline seriously delinquent for accounting purposes.)

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/business/201902131072395070-cant-afford-basics-a...