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The white noise of American politics is the gurgling river of rhetoric from two presidential candidates who seem determined to say nothing germane about the nation’s domestic misgovernance and deteriorating security. The candidates are wagering that there are no serious consequences of prolonged unseriousness. Last Monday, the national debt “unexpectedly” surged past $35 trillion. Neither candidate seemed to notice. But, […]

‘Republicans and Democrats … always seem to work just fine when they’re spending your money,’ Haley said PALM BEACH, Fla. – Nikki Haley blamed President Biden and Democrats as well as also her one-time boss and current rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump, over massive government spending. In a speech Saturday to […]

President Biden wrongly claimed Tuesday that he slashed the national debt by $1.7 trillion — despite increasing it by about $3.84 trillion over his first two years in office. The 80-year-old president made the error — apparently as a result of confusing the terms “debt” and “deficit” — while bashing House Republicans as irresponsible for demanding […]

It wasn’t so long ago that some experts said not to worry about government debt, that a country like the U.S. with debt in its own currency had little concern. That was the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) take, at least. An economic thesis for a reality that included social issues, politics, and the messy emotional […]

In recent speeches, President Joe Biden has been misleadingly taking credit for cutting federal deficits by historic amounts, though most of the reduction in deficits is the result of expiring emergency pandemic spending. Deficits fell between fiscal year 2020 and 2021 far less than initially projected after Biden added to them with more emergency pandemic […]

  The May 5 article on federal deficits and debt (“Biden will continue to reduce deficit, he says”) had a glaring mistake in its opening sentence. Washington Post reporter Eugene Scott wrote in the article The Plain Dealer reprinted that the Biden administration will be “paying down the debt for the first time in six […]

The crab bisque index is flashing a warning signal for Real Money Columnist Jonathan Heller. Real Money Columnist Jonathan Heller has been looking back to the 1970s to gain some perspective of rising inflation rates these days. He’s using some familiar consumer products to take the measure of rising prices. “Recently, I have been served […]

Here’s one fact about inflation – it reduces the real value of debt. So in these times of historic high inflation, our colleagues Adrian Ma and Wailin Wong over at The Indicator From Planet Money wanted to explore if inflation can be a good thing for borrowers, specifically those big borrowers, national governments. WAILIN WONG, […]

With President Joe Biden considering canceling up to $10,000 in federal student loans per borrower, a long sought after policy dream for millions of Americans who struggled with years of repayment could become a reality. But student loan cancellation isn’t a magic wand that makes those loans disappear—they’ll have to be paid for somehow. But the […]

This is the full transcript for episode 2 of season 3 of the Quartz Obsession podcast, National debt: Acceptable imbalance. Kira Bindrim: You could be forgiven for thinking that hanging onto debt, any debt, is a bad thing. When people go into debt, like many do to attend college, make major purchases, or put a down payment on a home, they’re often […]