In 1970, the federal debt was $372 billion.
In at end of quarter 2020, the federal debt was $26,477 billion.
Economy
Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That Itβll Weigh Down the Economy for Years β ProPublica
The “King of debt promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge. Add in the pandemic, and he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president.
TikTok personal finance advice is going viral, but be wary – Vox
Lessons from the COVID Stress Test β Money, Banking and Financial Markets
Open-end Funds vs. ETFs: Lessons from the COVID Stress Test β Money, Banking and Financial Markets
or example, the March 2020 dysfunction in the corporate bond market highlights the extraordinary fragility of a market that accounts for nearly 60% of the debt and borrowings of the nonfinancial corporate sector. Yield spreads over equivalent Treasuries widened further than at any time since the GC, with bond prices plunging even for instruments that have little risk of default. (See Liang for an excellent overview.)
You might think that the COVI shock would reveal fragilities through both a reduction in the perceived creditworthiness of borrowers (reflecting a decline of expected future cash flows) and an increase in required compensation for risk (say, due to a heightened correlation with consumption risks). Indeed, as the full force of the pandemic hit in March, it did prompt a wave of credit downgrades.
Yet, scholarly work suggests that the predominant sources of fragility were elsewhere. or example, dealers were reluctant to increase inventories while deep-pocketed market participants generally failed to step in. As a result, the cost of trading corporate bonds surged. It took the announcement of the ed’s willingness to intervene as a “market maker of last resortΘ to bring the market back to life. (See, for example, the discussions in Haddad, Moreira and Muir, O’Hara and Zhou, and Kargar et al.)
Biden Transition Updates : NPR
Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Treasury epartment, made the case for aggressive economic relief, urging lawmakers to "act big" to fight the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate inance Committee on Tuesday, Yellen pressed lawmakers to pass the $1.9 trillion spending package that the incoming administration has proposed to keep families and businesses afloat as well as to accelerate vaccinations against the virus.
"Without further action, we risk a longer, more painful recession now and longer-term scarring of the economy later," Yellen said. "In the long run, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs."
Yellen, a labor economist who chaired the ederal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, would be the first woman to lead the Treasury epartment. Her nomination has the backing of all the living former Treasury secretaries, both emocrats and Republicans.
Whatβs behind the recent surge in the M1 money supply? | FRED Blog
While the terms “money" and "wealth" often mean the same thing in everyday parlance, economists define money more narrowly as the component of wealth consisting of “transaction balances.Θ That is, if you can use it to buy goods and services and to settle debts, then it’s considered to be money.
Money is distinct from other forms of wealth that first need to be liquidated—that is, converted into money—before their value can be spent. According to this definition, physical currency and checkable bank deposits constitute money. And, indeed, these objects make up the definition of what economists label as the M1 money supply.
Because money is valued as a payment instrument, people are willing to hold a fraction of their wealth in money form for the sake of convenience, even though money earns relatively little interest and cash usually earns no interest at all.
If M1 carries the opportunity cost of not earning much interest, then why has the M1 money supply been increasing?
This increase is shown in the RE graph above (red line), where we measure M1’s opportunity cost as the one-year U.S. Treasury yield (green line). In late ebruary and early March of 2020, the ed cut its policy interest rate dramatically to help ease credit conditions during the COVI-19 crisis. The resulting acceleration in the supply of M1 can be understood largely as banks accommodating an increase in people’s demand for money. However, the opportunity cost of money has remained more or less constant throughout 2020, over which time M1 growth has accelerated. What might account for this behavior?