News
Bloomberg | No Agreement on $1.2 Trillion in Cuts as Deadline Nears
Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress are nowhere near a plan to avert $1.2 trillion in spending cuts about two weeks before they are set to begin.
Politico | Republicans predict sequester will happen
Top congressional Republicans predicted Wednesday that the sequester will hit at the end of the month – the latest chapter in the series of budget battles that have stymied Washington in the last few years.
WSJ | Budget Surplus Posted for January
The U.S. budget posted a rare January surplus, largely reflecting a big boost in tax revenue, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.
Econ Comments & Analysis
WSJ | Don't Count on China to Bail Out the U.S.
With the U.S. likely to continue running substantial deficits, Americans wonder if China is going to continue buying up U.S. Treasurys.
CBO | Testimony on the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023
Economic growth will remain slow this year, CBO anticipates, as gradual improvement in many of the forces that drive the economy is offset by the effects of budgetary changes that are scheduled to occur under current law. After this year, economic growth will speed up, CBO projects, causing the unemployment rate to decline and inflation and interest rates to eventually rise from their current low levels.
CATO | Spending Beyond Our Means: How We Are Bankrupting Future Generations
Current U.S. fiscal policy, including the recently concluded “fiscal cliff” debt deal, is placing an enormous financial burden on today’s children and on future generations in order to deliver government benefits to current middle-aged workers and their elders. Standard government accounting methods hide that intergenerational transfer from the public and make it difficult to calculate how large the transfer is.
Heritage Foundation | How the United States’ High Debt Will Weaken the Economy and Hurt Americans
U.S. federal spending in 2013, combined with depressed receipts from a weak economy, is on track to result in a deficit of $850 billion. Publicly held debt in the United States will exceed 76 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013, and chronic deficits are projected to push U.S. debt to 87 percent of the economy in 10 years.
Blogs
Library of Economics | Must Default Be Avoided at All Costs?
Raising the debt ceiling without a commitment to improve our long-term debt problem has adverse consequences as well. Recently, the rating agency Fitch warned the US government that while it wants the debt ceiling to be raised, it also wants the government to come up with a credible medium-term deficit-reduction plan.
