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Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

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Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#31
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clinton balanced the budget back in the 90’s. Biden and Obama’s terms were almost entirely defined by picking up economic disasters the previous administration caused. (2009 marked the beginning of the housing crisis, bank defaults due to deregulation and occupy wall street. 2021 was mid pandemic, after Trump spent years printing money with his zero interest rate stuff and tax cuts. He also fired the US funded team t…

How did you come to the conclusion that Clinton balanced the budget? When have any of these presidents successfully pushed for reducing the federal deficit during their tenures? Any actual reductions to the debt you’ve seen? What’s causing you to focus on presidents rather than congressional actions? How do you think fiscal policy keeps getting passed through congress when there’s largely two parties that have to agr…

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD

Because the deficit was positive between 1997 and 2001, during Bill Clinton’s second term as POTUS.

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#32
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This present issue has been caused by decades of bad fiscal policy by both parties: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S Here for example, the Congressional Budget Office, forecasted federal debt as a percent of GDP would continue to rise unchecked, back in 2023 : https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59014 The only presidential politician who sounded the alarm was Ross Perot, all the way back in the 90s. Lyn Ald…

> This present issue has been caused by decades of bad fiscal policy by both parties So I completely agree with this statement, but I completely disagree with the metric you've chosen to illustrate it. "National debt" only exists due to the martingale of the Federal Reserve neutering the government's own monetary sovereignty. If we need to have an inflationary currency, then the new money should be spent by Congress…

This is basically a modern money theory view (correct me if I’m wrong)?

It relies on discipline in the government to prevent inflation, e.g. raising taxes and cutting spending. But this is a similar problem to what we have already. There is no discipline, just short term thinking due to bad incentives.

http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/macro_theory/mmt_r...

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This present issue has been caused by decades of bad fiscal policy by both parties So I completely agree with this statement, but I completely disagree with the metric you've chosen to illustrate it. "National debt" only exists due to the martingale of the Federal Reserve neutering the government's own monetary sovereignty. If we need to have an inflationary currency, then the new money should be spent by Congress…

This is basically a modern money theory view (correct me if I’m wrong)? It relies on discipline in the government to prevent inflation, e.g. raising taxes and cutting spending. But this is a similar problem to what we have already. There is no discipline, just short term thinking due to bad incentives. http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/macro_theory/mmt_r...

Perhaps, from the bits I've read? I have arrived at it coming from an Austrian/conservative economics perspective. It's clear that we have had profligate monetary creation for decades without corresponding high across-the-board price inflation. My older self is also willing to accept the orthodox response to Gresham's law whereby a deflationary currency would be quickly replaced with a different inflating one. So then the question becomes what are we spending the new money on? Presently that is mostly subsidized low-interest loans.

If your concern is discipline, then it's easy enough to imagine a department similar to the Fed that comes up with a figure of how much new money to create for the right amount of average price inflation, with much discretionary spending by Congress being set in terms of that figure. That would surely be more responsible than the current system where one political team talks in terms of a pretend "fiscal responsibility" that only hamstrings Congress but doesn't actually affect monetary inflation.

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#34
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you come to the conclusion that Clinton balanced the budget? When have any of these presidents successfully pushed for reducing the federal deficit during their tenures? Any actual reductions to the debt you’ve seen? What’s causing you to focus on presidents rather than congressional actions? How do you think fiscal policy keeps getting passed through congress when there’s largely two parties that have to agr…

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD Because the deficit was positive between 1997 and 2001, during Bill Clinton’s second term as POTUS.

Here’s federal debt:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

A surplus in the billions for a few years did not meaningfully change a federal debt that’s in the trillions. Further, the surplus that paid down public debt was completely wiped out by social security and Medicare liabilities during that time

Better than nothing you might say, but not the structural change needed to get the US out of the hole

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#35

Does anyone else have the sickening feeling that their actual plan is to straight up destroy USD, with the looters fleeing to hard assets and foreign/crypto currency, and the plebs' currency crisis then serving as the justification for naked fascism red in tooth and claw? With the narrative then shifting to the usual "Democrats did this! And we tried to stop it but we were too late!" nonsense, backed up by an army of…

[flagged]

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#36
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Stephen Miran, I always like people who are (relatively) honest > CEA Chairman Steve Miran Hudson Institute Event Remarks https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/04/cea-...

It's a bit of a stretch to call this juxtaposition of topics, with absolutely zero analysis of how they're connected, honest: > we tax hardworking Americans mightily to finance global security. On the financial side, the reserve function of the dollar has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed, along with other countries’ unfair barriers to trade, to unsustainable trade deficits. Money is fungible bet…

(relatively)

I call this kind of nonsense that can be seen through at a glance an 'relatively honest lie'

those lines you quoted are nonsense that can be totally ignored without misunderstanding his point, those lines are like something as "get schwifty"

> Second, they can get schwifty by opening their markets and buying more from America

> Fifth, they could simply write checks to Treasury that help us get schwifty

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#37
post #30

I'm told the Wall Street folk will need to buy bonds or Trump will sink the ship. The question is, how do you expect him to refinance 7T in debt by the end of 25? Implode the dollar?

To be fair the US is too big to fail. As Europe was forced to "do whatever it takes" to save the euro and bail out Greece the entire world can't stand by and watch America sink.

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#38

Does anyone else have the sickening feeling that their actual plan is to straight up destroy USD, with the looters fleeing to hard assets and foreign/crypto currency, and the plebs' currency crisis then serving as the justification for naked fascism red in tooth and claw? With the narrative then shifting to the usual "Democrats did this! And we tried to stop it but we were too late!" nonsense, backed up by an army of…

It’s kind of logical right? The dollar was misused over 50 years. What’s the best way to get rid of your debt? Make the usd worthless. Various methods, but one: have another reserve currency in the world but make sure you have enough of that to stay powerful.

He even gave the advice not to sell that one.

It’s a good but toxic strategy. Give freely printed dollars in exchange for resources over 50years, and then make it worthless.

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD Because the deficit was positive between 1997 and 2001, during Bill Clinton’s second term as POTUS.

Here’s federal debt: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN A surplus in the billions for a few years did not meaningfully change a federal debt that’s in the trillions. Further, the surplus that paid down public debt was completely wiped out by social security and Medicare liabilities during that time Better than nothing you might say, but not the structural change needed to get the US out of the hole

[flagged]

Re: Treasury Yields Soar as Ballooning U.S. Deficit Worries Wall Street

#40
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they would have lost a record increase in U.S. assets across the board, including the US dollar, which should have gone down if the problem was money printing. It’s rare to have such a clearly evident case of cause and effect. We know why yields are going up. Because investors don’t believe the U.S. government can control their budget deficits. The recent rising yields have little to do with money printing from 4…

Also, 0% interest was a thing for years before covid. It was pretty much the entire trump administration. (Back then, we bet on unprecedented inflation, and that’s been working out great so far.)

Yes you're right. I was just too poor then to notice.
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