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U.S. Treasury Data Lab

datalab.usaspending.gov

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Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#41

Post by darawk »

xxpor wrote: post #35
darawk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default." Alan Greenspan While this is partially true: 1. Sovereign nations absolutely can and do default. See, Russia in the 1990s and the LTCM fiasco. 2. Even though they do not have to default and can always print money to pay their debts, doing so causes inflation. How much inflation it cause…

Point 2 is extremely debatable, especially if you're a reserve currency. The balance of payments also matters.

It's really not debatable at all. What is debatable is how much printing it takes. It is not debatable that there exists an amount of printing that will cause inflation.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#42

Post by DSMan195276 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #6
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private banks create a good chunk of the new money that goes into circulation by issuing loans. Even this is misleading private banks do not "create" money. They add to the supply but do not create. For every loan credit there is an equal loan debit. The total amount of money, the sum of all credits and debits, is the exact same.

> The total amount of money, the sum of all credits and debits, is the exact same. Can't banks lend something like 7X more money than they have in deposits?

Only as a proportion of the total amount of money deposited in the bank. That 7x means that if $100 is deposited, the bank can loan out up to $87.5 and would have to keep $12.5, which equates to loaning out x7 the amount kept as reserve. In that scenario there still was only ever $100 dollars, but depending upon how you count the money supply the bank has now 'created' an extra $87.5 and the total supply is $187.5.

In practice it's a lot fuzzier than that, but the above is the basic concept people are usually talking about. The 7x doesn't mean the government or someone else is handing them extra dollar bills, it's just the ratio of what has to be kept in reserves vs. can be loaned out, and the amount that is loaned out effectively gets counted twice in terms of the money supply (and many more times over, since that money will get deposited into a bank and loaned out again at that 7x ratio).

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#43

Post by tomrod »

lvl100 wrote: post #23

Please don’t tell me they spent millions in govt contract money so some recent college grad can practice Plotly/Bokeh.

> Your Guide to America's Finances is a re-invention of the Citizen’s Guide to the Financial Report of the U.S. Government. This site was created in response to the public’s desire to learn more about the financial picture of the United States. Where does the money come from? Where does it go? What are the trends over time, and how does the U.S. compare to other countries? This guide was created to make federal financial information open and accessible to all - reflecting the very principles that our founding fathers set forth when the United States was formed.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#44

Post by jkhdigital »

pphysch wrote: post #12
aazaa wrote: post #3

> While the Department of the Treasury prints actual dollars, “printing money” is also a term that is sometimes used to describe a means of monetary policy, which is conducted by the Federal Reserve. Monetary policy involves controlling the supply of money and the cost of borrowing. The Federal Reserve uses monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates on the beha…

> Although some view the Fed's QE as a form of "money printing," it's not. It's an asset swap in which the Federal reserve buys a Treasury from a bank, issuing a reserve asset as a credit to the bank. Reserve assets thereby become "trapped" inside the banking system. They are not cash and can only be used under very restricted conditions (not unlike a laundry token) at least according to some sources. According to th…

It is true that a bank can convert reserves to notes, but that doesn’t mean the bank will actually do so. And if it does, it is merely facilitating the withdrawal of cash for its depositors, which means that the money already exists (in the form of a demand deposit account balance).

New money is created by debt issuance. This comes from both the federal government, which supplies the monetary base, and from commercial lenders, which leverage the monetary base through loans to the “real” economy—business startup loans, mortgages, supply chain finance, revolving lines of credit, etc.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#45

Post by jkhdigital »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
jkhdigital wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government debt does not exist in a vacuum: it comes into existence because the government spent more money than it took in. What did it spend that money on? Ask the lobbyists.

> Government debt does not exist in a vacuum: it comes into existence because the government spent more money than it took in. No, it exists because government issued commitments to pay people money in the future. A government that creates its own currency has no need to do this to spend more than it takes in in revenue, and even a government that doesn't create its own currency is free to issue such commitments with…

This makes no sense. The government doesn’t issue debt and then just sit on the cash. The debt ceiling is constantly being raised here in the US because every cent is spent.

The two events (1) Congress deciding to spend money (in excess of receipts), and (2) the Treasury issuing debt, are directly causally related. If event (1) doesn’t happen, then event (2) won’t happen. In theory it could, but in reality it does not, period.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

jkhdigital wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Government debt does not exist in a vacuum: it comes into existence because the government spent more money than it took in. No, it exists because government issued commitments to pay people money in the future. A government that creates its own currency has no need to do this to spend more than it takes in in revenue, and even a government that doesn't create its own currency is free to issue such commitments with…

This makes no sense. The government doesn’t issue debt and then just sit on the cash. The debt ceiling is constantly being raised here in the US because every cent is spent. The two events (1) Congress deciding to spend money (in excess of receipts), and (2) the Treasury issuing debt, are directly causally related. If event (1) doesn’t happen, then event (2) won’t happen. In theory it could, but in reality it does no…

The US Congress chooses to behave (approximately) as if it had a commodity rather than self-issued fiat currency, but this is a choice, not some kind of necessity.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#47

Post by adventured »

jkhdigital wrote: post #34
Gabriel_Martin wrote: post #11

When it comes to comparing the amounts of US gov spending to US household spending (not that I could propose a better mechanism, meaning I understand the value of framing things in such a way, and fully admit I can't think of a more salient way to do it) I'm just not a fan of comparing state level spending to household or personal finance. It leads to other examples being used that just are not true. Like: "It is sim…

The problem with unconstrained government deficit finance is not inflation, it is cronyism and corruption. When 638 individuals decide how $3 trillion gets spent, almost any amount of lobbying expense will yield a positive NPV.

> When 638 individuals decide how $3 trillion gets spent

Just a small correction. Federal Government spending was $4.4 trillion in 2019. It was $6.6t for 2020 [2], with $4.6t of that being mandatory spending; tax revenue was $3.4t for 2020 by comparison. We wish outlays were only $3t, we'd have a nice budget surplus right now.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324

[2] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#48

Post by refurb »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #20
phkahler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogies are good to help people see that government debt is bad. When a person is in over their head, they can possibly file for bankruptcy. When a government gets in over their head bad things happen too, up to and including wars. Comparing government debt to personal debt is just a way to make it more comprehensible how bad the situation is.

Government debt is not bad. Government debt is a net private surplus.

Government debt competes with private debt.

Re: U.S. Treasury Data Lab

#49

Post by ourgovtisinept »

I know a US Treasury employee that has an active felony arrest warrant in their name in a US State. They told me they only have to tell their boss if they’re arrested, not before. This person continues to wield power over mere mortals like us. The government is a joke.
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