Peter's Blog

Treasury Adds Another $94B in Short-Term Debt and $278B Overall

Debt issuance by the US Treasury has fallen since the binge in December when the Treasury had to replenish its “extraordinary measures” stockpiles (government employee retirement funds) after the end of the “debt ceiling” debate. Still, issuance remains relatively high. The Treasury added another $278 billion in debt during February. Similar to January, the Treasury […]

The Fed Pulls Back on Treasuries but Dives in on Mortgage-Backed Securities

Even with the taper, the Fed continues to expand its balance sheet. And it’s not tapering the purchase of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) nearly as fast as advertised.

Treasury Realizes First Surplus in Nearly 2.5 Years

The US Treasury realized a monthly surplus of $118.7 billion in January. It was the first budget surplus since September 2019 and the largest since it realized a $160 billion surplus in April of 2019. The surplus was driven by high revenue from a continued surge in Individual Taxes. This was combined with shrinking expenditures […]

Treasury Increases Short-Term Debt by $200B as Total Debt Crosses $30T

The Treasury added almost $400 billion of debt in January, the third most since July 2020. As the month closed out, the national debt eclipsed $30 trillion. The other two larger debt increases both came right after the debt ceiling was raised. Perhaps most important is the fact that almost $200B of the newly added […]

Treasury Adds $709B to the Debt in a Single Month

The debt ceiling was raised in December and the Treasury responded immediately, adding $709 billion in debt over the month. To be fair, $470 billion of this was non-marketable, as shown below. Note: Non-Marketable consists almost entirely of debt the government owes to itself (e.g., debt owed to Social Security or public retirement)

Treasury Binges in October, Adding Almost Half a Trillion in Debt

After all the drama, Congress finally did what everyone knew it would do.  It raised the debt ceiling by $480 billion in October. The Treasury wasted no time and quickly added $480 billion to the national debt in the second half of the month. With this new debt tagged on, if the Fed has to […]

Did the Fed Experiment With a Mini-Taper and Fail?

The Federal Reserve has slightly slowed its asset purchases over the last few months. Was this a trial mini-taper? If so, the results are not good news for the central bankers over at the Fed. The Fed balance sheet stands at $8.56 trillion. That’s up by $108 billion from the prior month-end, but down over […]

A More Accurate CPI: Up .97% MoM and 7.1% YoY

The CPI data for September came in hotter than expected at 0.4%. That pushed the yearly gain to 5.4%. But an honest CPI calculation would come in even hotter. I am doing something different this month. In past reviews of the CPI, I typically take the BLS data and recalculate the values to get a more […]

Did The Treasury Raid $250 Billion from Government Retirement Accounts (Again)?

The Treasury bumped up against the debt ceiling at the end of July. Since then, it has been using “extraordinary measures” to allow the Government to keep hemorrhaging cash without having to increase the debt ceiling. The chart below shows the month-over-month change in debt for August equal to $0. Despite zero net change, there […]

Total US Debt Shrinks by $101 Billion into Debt Ceiling Saga

“Just because something is inevitable, does not make it imminent, but eventually the future arrives” The US Government is on an unsustainable debt trajectory. Even though the Federal Reserve has acknowledged this fact, most mainstream pundits consider it a distant problem or even not an issue at all. They argue that debt fears have raged […]