Debt

America is drunk with debt, and the cost of the tab is under the influence of monetary and fiscal policies around the world. With few exceptions, our government saddles future generations with bills from current spending. It has been easy to do since the world’s primary reserve currency is the U.S. dollar, offering global markets a deep, liquid, and secure place to store savings.

Let’s start this note off with a couple of definitions. A budget deficit is a flow measured over a period, typically a fiscal year. These occur when a nation spends an amount greater than the revenue it collects. In America, most of the revenue collected by the federal government is in the form of taxes.

Around the world, governments are pouring money into national security. This can take many forms. Governments, for instance, might spend their tax revenues on militaries, cyber security, or defense against terrorism.

Arthur “Pop” Momand created the comic “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” a strip depicting the McGinnis family who struggle to keep up with the lifestyle of their neighbors.  Since its creation in 1913, Americans have been doing just that.  Our economy is driven by consumption.  Spending on goods and services represents roughly 70% of the nation’s output

Spending borrowed money can be fun, but paying it back rarely is. However, that is how the financial system works in America.  A person looking to spend more than they have available borrows money from another source which has more money than it needs at the same moment in time.  This can go on and help fuel an economic expansion for a while but not forever.

With the unofficial start to summer right around the corner, “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess which premiered in Boston in 1935 is frequently playing on the Atlas jukebox.  This story centers around an African American couple living in South Carolina on Charleston’s impoverished Catfish Row.

Family Feud is a gameshow which started in 1976 and aired through 1985.  After a few years hiatus, it returned in 1988, only to end again in 1995.  Then as the last century came to a close, it managed to make another comeback, one which has lasted through today.  It pits two families against each other, competing to determine answers to survey questions previously asked to a grou

Cycles govern much of our world.  The Beatles taught us that when the sun moves lower in the sky for a portion of the year we shouldn’t fret about the cold lasting forever.  Economies also ebb and flow as the business cycle moves from periods of expansion into usually relatively short intervals of contraction.  Even breathing is cyclical. 

Zombies are occasionally the subjects of fictional works.  These undead, horror-related characters are found in books, music videos, movies, and video games.  Often pathogens infect them, turning a once lively person into no more than an animated corporeal without other human essences.  Once an individual transitions, they may become a vector of the disease for which there is no

The American Government’s fiscal year has begun, and the start is already deeper into the red than year ago.  During the first 31 days of fiscal 2020, our nation’s deficit reached $134.5 billion, rising 33.8 percent!  This quick dig deeper into the debt hole follows the nearly $1 trillion shortfall in 2019.