The $22 Trillion Question
By Ben Ruffel
June 12, 2019, Institutional Investor
The tone was apocalyptic: “The U.S. federal budget is on an unsustainable path . . . . The scale of the nation’s projected budgetary imbalances is now so large that the risk of severe adverse consequences must be taken very seriously.” The growth in the American federal debt and deficit would soon produce a “fundamental shift in market expectations and a related loss of confidence both at home and abroad,” and the resulting “fiscal and financial disarray” would “depress economic activity much more than the conventional analysis would suggest.”
These warnings came not from Chicken Little. The white paper was co-authored by Robert Rubin, President Clinton’s Treasury secretary, and Peter Orszag, President Obama’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. If these two were worried, perhaps there was something to worry about.
