Crisis and Leviathan is Robert Higgs’ great work of history exploring how politicians exploit crisis situations to grow their power. As their power grows, so too does the size of government. Leviathan, of course, refers to the old bible stories of a multi-headed sea serpent with an insatiable appetite — much like today’s U.S….
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After running up the national debt by more than three trillion dollars in the past four months, some U.S. senators are starting to have second thoughts about whether that borrowing might have some negative effects for the nation’s economy. It is a good concern to have, especially since the U.S. Congress is currently negotiating…
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The total public debt outstanding of the U.S. government has been exploding at a nearly unprecedented rate. Starting from March 15, 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic gave politicians a reason to open the federal government’s spending floodgates, the national debt stood at a nearly even $23.5 trillion. Three months later, on June 15,…
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In the last two months, the U.S. Federal Reserve has underwritten every single dollar borrowed by the U.S. government, and then some, becoming the biggest single lender to the federal government along the way. And now, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has told Uncle Sam to get out there and spend! Reuters has the…
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Do you remember life before the coronavirus epidemic? Like back in September 2019, when the Social Security Trust Fund was the largest creditor to the U.S. government? The venerable trust fund’s long reign as the biggest single lender of money to the U.S. government has come to an end, because Uncle Sam has a…
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Crises have a way of exposing who politicians think they really work for. The coronavirus epidemic in the United States is no different in providing examples of how politicians are pitching changes to the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 to gain favor among those they seek to provide aid in future elections,…
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On October 11, 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would begin buying billions of Treasury bills every month to ensure the nation’s banking system would have “ample reserves” through the end of 2019 as part of its efforts to help prevent a liquidity crisis from wreaking havoc in U.S. money markets.

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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Thanks to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which has been described as “the worst budget deal in history,” the U.S. government will spend $57.9 trillion over the next 10 years, with $12.2 trillion of that spending requiring new borrowing that will add to the U.S. government’s bloated $22.7 trillion national debt. Those already…
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Less than two months after acting to bail out the nation’s money markets because of a liquidity crisis that arose from a surge in U.S. government borrowing to fund its spending, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified before the U.S. Congress that the federal government’s current course of debt-fueled spending is on an “unsustainable…
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