Tag: Boomergeddon
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Dress Rehearsal for Boomergeddon
by James A. Bacon Judging by the headlines in Virginia’s newspapers, one might think that federal budget cuts are causing widespread devastation to government services and the economy. Here is a sampling from just the past couple of days: NASA Langley workforce slashed by 40% in Trump budget plan — The Virginian-Pilot “‘A smack in…
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Embrace the Musk-alypse
by James A. Bacon From reading the news clips yesterday, one would have thought the end of the world was at hand. Gog and Magog in the form of Elon Musk and DOGE have unleashed a cascade of horrors across the Old Dominion. The Washington Post sounded the alarm: “With federal cuts looming, Northern Virginia…
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Flyover Country’s Budget Dilemma
by James A. Bacon Dwayne Yancey, founding editor of Cardinal News, may be the most prolific purveyor of commentary in the Old Dominion (although I try to give him a run for his money). He loves making deep dives into the data. He’s often insightful and his tone is always reasonable. I do quibble, however,…
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What the War on the Deep State Means for Virginia
by James A. Bacon U.S. Sen. Mark Warner warned Thursday that massive cuts and dislocations to the federal workforce under president-elect Donald Trump would be a “disaster for Virginia’s economy. … We would get hit worse than any other states.” “When you think not just [about] the contractor workforce up in Northern Virginia, but all…
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Can Virginia Survive Federal “Debt Doom”?
by James A. Bacon by James A. Bacon I call it “Boomergeddon.” Blogger-columnist-law school prof Glenn Harlan Reynolds calls it “Debt Doom.” Whatever you call it, the fiscal meltdown of U.S. government finances is nearly inevitable. The only meaningful questions are how long it takes to happen and how to survive it. Reynolds and I…
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Fiscal Train Wreck
by James A. Bacon Think of the Washington Metro as a harbinger of the fiscal fate in store for the United States: it’s just a matter of time before the wheels fall off the subway car. Today The Washington Post reminds us that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is running out of money.…
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Boomergeddon Countdown: Ten Years… Nine…
by James A. Bacon The last time the United States had a serious conversation about deficit spending and the accumulating national debt was in 2010 with the publication of the Simpson-Bowles study. (That’s about the same time I wrote Boomergeddon, predicting that the United States had 20 to 30 years before the fiscal wheels fell…
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Latest Debt and Deficit Projections Warrant a Full-Scale Freakout
by James A. Bacon The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicate that, given continuation of current levels of taxation and programmatic spending, the U.S. budget deficit will be running at $2.3 trillion a year by 2033, driven in large part by a $1 trillion-a-year increase in interest payments on the national debt…
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Love that Budget Surplus! Use It to Bullet-Proof State Finances.
by James A. Bacon There’s good news for Virginia on the fiscal front. We need to make the most of it. The Old Dominion closed fiscal 2022 with a $1.94 billion General Fund revenue surplus, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced yesterday. Total revenue rose 16.3% from the previous fiscal year. “Fiscal 2022 was an extraordinary year…
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The Monetary Rape of Middle-Class Retirees
by James A. Bacon This past year saw one of the greatest redistributions of wealth in U.S. history. People are upset by the 8.5% increase in inflation, but they’re not nearly as upset as they should be. Wage earners, especially lower-income wage earners, have every right to be irate. Their hourly pay has increased, but…
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Boomergeddon Watch: We’re Right on Track
by James A. Bacon The U.S. national debt has passed a symbolically important milestone of $30 trillion. That’s up from the $13-$14 trillion when I wrote my book, “Boomergeddon,” in 2010 warning that the U.S. government was heading to functional insolvency by the late 2020’s or early 2030’s. I argued that higher deficits and debt…
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Don’t Let “Scarring” Hinder Economic Recovery
by James A. Bacon Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, is optimistic overall about the nation’s economic recovery. The housing market is strong. Job creation has resumed. Disposable incomes are up. And families are saving more and paying down their credit cards. But he worries about “scarring” — a term that…
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Signs of the Bubble Economy…
From Virginia Business magazine: Charlottesville-based Blue Ridge Bank has made it possible for customers to purchase and redeem bitcoin at its ATMs — the first commercial bank in the country to do so. Blue Ridge Bank cardholders can purchase and redeem the virtual currency at 19 locations across the state. A year ago, bitcoins were worth…
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Welcome to the New Year, Same as the Old Year
by James A. Bacon Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, my wife and friends and I tossed confetti, tooted our noisemakers and welcomed in a new year. Twenty twenty, we all agreed, couldn’t possibly be worse than 2019. It didn’t take long to disabuse us of that notion. First came the coronavirus. Then the George…
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Bad Student Loan Debt: $435 Billion and Counting
by James A. Bacon “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen said many years ago. With the passage of time and inflation, we might need to update the quote to “a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there…” But even by the debased standards of…