I admit that when I first read your post, I thought there was probably something amiss with the data interpretation so I jumped over to FRED graph at the St. Louis Fed website(one of my favorite places to play around) to see for myself. I pulled up a graph of GDP, current expenditures, and currents receipts. While the relationship wasn’t perfect, it is easy to see that expenditures track nicely with GDP, although a little less nicely the last year or so. What was also easy to see was how erratic the receipts series is by comparison. Without deep investigation it surely seem like the cause budget deficit has a lot more to do with a drop in receipts than an increase in expenditures. I’m a little embarrassed at my previous misconceptions, but I’ll just keep those to myself. Thanks for the insight.
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