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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums: The $38 trillion national debt will soon be growing faster than the U.S. economy itself, watchdog warns
The United States national debt has reached a precarious milestone, hitting 100% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and placing the nation on a trajectory that could trigger six distinct types of fiscal crises, according to an ominous new warning issued Thursday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
With the national debt now effectively equal to the size of the entire U.S. economy, the nonpartisan watchdogs latest report, What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like? outlined a dangerous future ahead. If the national debt continues to grow faster than the economy, the report said, the country could ultimately experience a financial crisis, an inflation crisis, an austerity crisis, a currency crisis, a default crisis, a gradual crisis, or some combination of crises. Any of these would cause massive disruption and substantially reduce living standards for Americans and people across the world.
The report warned that unless policymakers enact a thoughtful pro-growth deficit reduction package, disaster likely lies ahead.The United States is deeply indebted, and its finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory, the report concluded. While its impossible to know when disaster will strike, some form of crisis is almost inevitable without a course correction, the CRFB said.
The Austerity Crisis: Historic economic collapse
Among the most alarming scenarios detailed is the Austerity Crisis. In this potential future, a loss of market confidence would force lawmakers to enact abrupt, massive spending cuts or tax hikes to quell panic. While deficit reduction is necessary, the CRFB warned that rapid implementation of such austerity measures during a weak economy could trigger the worst economic contraction in nearly a century.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/form-crisis-almost-inevitable-38-180855339.html
Most of it incurred under Trump.
Chasstev365
(7,244 posts)bucolic_frolic
(54,260 posts)All the money is in billionaires' bank accounts from the Trump Tax Cuts. Everyone else has no more blood money left to give.
Initech
(107,720 posts)That is the big secret that they're not telling you about the economy. Our current system is completely unsustainable and is actively getting worse under this shitty administration.
And I don't know what can be done to begin reversing it.
Johonny
(25,627 posts)And not creating jobs. It's an amazing feat of total financial mismanagement. We should make the billionaires pay this cost in the future.
Eat the rich going to be more and more attractive...