The Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] has an interesting chart showing how the U.S. government borrowing has grown substantially since the start of the global crisis, and how the source of borrowing have changed. More of the financing, notes CFR, is now coming from domestic rather than foreign sources.
Our national debt — based on tax collections lagging well behind spending — is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this fiscal year, an unprecedented increase that would not only test the world’s appetite for financing our spending, but one that would also produce a massive annual budget deficits forcing the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade.
Last month the Congressional Budget Office estimated this fiscal year’s budget deficit at nearly $1.7 trillion, more than $400 billion larger than it forecast in January. That means that the deficit, as a share of the US economy, will jump from the mid 8% level of GDP to nearly 12%, the highest percentage in more than sixty year.
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