The Congressional Budget Office released its update on the budget outlook today. What’s the message behind the message?
Category Archives: deficits
A closer look at the US-China trade figures…and more on the RMB
The Renminbi (RMB) is probably undervalued, according to some criteria. Would adjusting it fix the US-China trade deficit? Or the overall US trade deficit?
Billions for production, not a cent for conservation…
Well, not quite. But I find it interesting to see how much revenue the government loses by giving tax breaks to certain groups in the energy arena.
The June 2006 Trade Figures
Persisting trends, for now
The enigmatic Yuan
The Yuan has not been moving much. Or has it? And does it matter much for the U.S. current account deficit
A Dynamic Analysis of Permanent Extension of the President’s Tax Relief
The press account surrounding the Mid Session Review (MSR) (page 3-4) noted the preferred estimate of GNP response to the President’s tax proposals: real GNP might be 0.7 percent higher than steady state baseline. The Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis has just released the underlying analysis.
A long term perspective on differential approaches to fiscal policy
Or, over the past quarter century, have Democrats and Republicans acted differently?
(Non) transparency of GWOT expenditures, and an update on Iraq metrics
While the events in Lebanon and Gaza have pushed Iraq off center stage, Iraq and Afghanistan remain the largest fiscal drains on the U.S. Treasury and the military’s ability to respond to other strategic challenges. In this light, GAO Comptroller David Walker’s testimony on Tuesday [pdf] is both illuminating and depressing. From the Summary:
Some (delayed) reflections on whether the non-oil trade deficit stabilization at hand — or not
I was out of the country when these data were released, so I didn’t immediately write a post on the data. In any case several commentators covered the ground so well I didn’t have much to add immediately. Several forwarded the possibility of trade deficit (as a share of GDP) stabiization (see here and here), in light of the fact that the May trade release which showed a smaller than consensus deficit. In the past I made similar observations (see here). I remain hopeful, but am still not yet convinced.
Is the surge in tax receipts truly extraordinary?
There has been much talk about how the deficit problem has been licked, as tax receipts surge. Is (Lafferian) supply-side economics right? Are we in a new era of surging tax receipts for the forseeable future? The short answers are “no” and “no”.