Monday, April 30, 2018

FRED Blog — Did the U.S. government just achieve a surplus? : A closer look at our national accounts

Almost all governments run deficits, so it’s a big deal when a government achieves a surplus. This graph includes data for all levels of U.S. government (local, state, and federal) on the net result of their lending and borrowing: A net deficit appears below the zero line, and a net surplus appears above the zero line. Notice the sudden jump in the fourth quarter of 2017 that reaches just above zero? This is a seasonally adjusted data series, by the way, so this jump has nothing to do with the regular influx of tax payments as the filing deadline approaches. (And that particular seasonal jump is in the second quarter, anyway.) So what’s going on here?...
Notice "achieve." No one ever says, "achieve a deficit," only "achieve a balance" and "achieve a surplus."

FRED Blog
Did the U.S. government just achieve a surplus? : A closer look at our national accounts

3 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“This jump from deficit to surplus has to do with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. One of its provisions is a one-time tax of foreign corporate earnings from 1986 to 2017.“

This doesn’t look like it ($250b) showed up in the DTS this FY so far.... ?????

Are they now using Accrual?


Matt Franko said...

This jump from deficit to surplus has to do with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. One of its provisions is a one-time tax of foreign corporate earnings from 1986 to 2017. The so-called repatriation tax. This one-time capital transfer from businesses to government is estimated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to be about $250 billion. Converted to annual rates, this implies a $1 trillion jump in government revenue in the fourth quarter that will not happen again“

How are they going to be able to pay that if the profits were really in EUR?

Andrew Anderson said...

With negative yields on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary sovereign, a moral imperative to avoid welfare proportional to account balance, i.e. welfare for the rich, additions to the National Debt would be revenue EARNERS not revenue or price inflation space CONSUMERS.

Moreover, since fiat and longer maturity sovereign debt would be self-extinguishing, continual deficit spending would eventually be REQUIRED just to provide the negative interest needed. That or the supply of fiat would shrink to 0 if not for current technology physical fiat, aka "cash", and the negative-interest-free accounts at the cb that every individual adult citizens should have.