Visual Capitalist has created an interactive visualization of the publicly-held portion of the U.S. government’s public debt. It covers 150 years, combining historic data from 1900 through 2020 with CBO projections for the next 30 years. You’ll need to follow the link above to take advantage of the interactivity, but here’s the big picture...
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Do the U.S. national debt and the government’s budget deficits matter? If you listen to the economists shaping the Biden administration’s policy agenda, they say they do not. Their basic argument is that with interest rates so low, the government can borrow as much as politicians want to spend. They think they never have...
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The Congressional Budget Office has issued its 2021 Long-Term Budget Outlook months ahead of its usual schedule. The CBO forecasts that the publicly held portion of the national debt will grow to more than double the size of the U.S. economy during the next 30 years.

Writing in Foreign Policy, economist Dambisa Moyo paints a nightmare scenario of what is waiting for the next U.S. President:

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. government, which...
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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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