The Congressional Budget Office has finally released its 2020 Long Term Budget Outlook. Delayed for months, the CBO’s budget analysis confirms the coronavirus recession has made the U.S. government’s fiscal situation much worse. How much worse? In its 2019 outlook, the CBO expected the publicly held portion of the debt would hit 144 percent...
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Since mid-September 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been fighting to contain a liquidity crisis in the nation’s money markets that was caused in large part by excessive spending by the U.S. government. That surge in spending was prompted by “the worst budget deal in history” in late-July 2019, which forced the U.S. Treasury...
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The Fed’s emergency liquidity injection, combined with rate cuts and its additional purchases of U.S. Treasuries, constitutes the return of quantitative easing.

Frivolous commentary on the US debt crisis (like this) attributes to opponents of raising the debt ceiling the view that “defaults don’t matter.” Sensible people recognize, of course, that default (and even repudiation) are policy options that have benefits and costs, just as continuing to borrow and increasing the debt have benefits and costs....
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