FYI: Here is a number for your dinner conversation tonight: Did you know that the US government last year on average paid $1.5bn each day in interest payments, and this is rising toward $2bn per day over the coming years, see chart below. And this number could rise further as interest rates go up because of an overheating economy, more Treasury supply, and lack of demand for US fixed income from abroad because of higher hedging costs. These forces pushing US rates higher did not disappear yesterday.
Regards,
Ted
https://ritholtz.com/2018/10/us-deficit-1-5-billion-in-daily-interest/
Comments
https://msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell-calls-to-cut-social-security-medicare/ar-BBOtGyE
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DptYnPfXgAAIET9.jpg:large
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/mitch-mcconnell-medicare-social-security-bloomberg-news-entitlements-deficit.html
According to Wikipedia, United States public debt started with federal government debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War by the first U.S treasurer, Michael Hillegas, after its formation in 1789. The United States has continuously had a fluctuating public debt since then, except for about a year during 1835–1836.
Regards,
Ted
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/mitch-mcconnell-deficit-lies.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/17/politics/biden-2020-run/index.html
Because you’ve become mfo’s dark repository of virtually anything “linkable” - regardless of quality - folks will from time to time click on one of your links. To post a similar link (which @Mark is fully capable of doing) would have only drawn him into an empty - and likely nasty - guffaw with you over who linked the story first. So why bother?
However, your devotion to linking anything remotely related to investing (and sometimes not at all related) does not give you the right to dictate which stories MFO members will discuss or what they will say.
@Ted - I’ll agree with you to the point that some of the imagery presented by others here goes beyond what you and I both might consider in good taste. But shall the two of us object? That might resemble “The pot calling the kettle black.”
What get me is that the GOP is talking about Tax Cut 2.0 in coming months.
“President Trump himself expressed new concern about government spending Wednesday, telling members of his cabinet that they should plan to cut 5 percent from their agencies’ budgets while offering few details except to say the Pentagon budget would largely be spared ... Trump promised the cuts will ‘have a huge impact’. ”