Tag: Boomergeddon
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Boomergeddon vs Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
by DJ Rippert Saving America’s bacon. In 2010 Jim Bacon, blogrunner of this site, wrote a book titled Boomergeddon. The sub-title of the book is, “How Runaway Deficits and the Age Wave Will Bankrupt the Federal Government and Devastate Retirement for Baby Boomers Unless We Act Now.” The book is well written and contains considerable…
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(Almost) Free Money
By James C. Sherlock Steve Haner’s superb column on the state budget turned attention to federal aid to state and local governments. It is worthwhile to review where the feds get that money. James T. Agresti, CEO of Just Facts (chart above), has written recently hat U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is four times the historical average…
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Boomergeddon Update: Back on Track to Self-Destruction!
by James A. Bacon It’s been ten years since I published my book, “Boomergeddon,” in which I advanced the argument that the fiscal/monetary system of the United States would collapse into chaos by the late 2020s or so. The nation has continued down the path to perdition, but not at the rate I had expected.…
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Layne Cautions Again about Excess Debt and Risk
The good news in Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne’s presentation to the House Appropriations Committee this morning is that General Fund revenues, after a below-forecast start to the fiscal year, surged 27.4% in April. On a year-to-date basis, total revenues are 6.2% ahead of last year, beating the 5.9% forecast for Fiscal 2019. The bad…
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Spending Increases, Road Quality Decreases
A new study by Transportation for America and Taxpayers for Common Sense documents the magnitude of the “Growth Ponzi scheme” in the U.S. road transportation system. Between 2009 and 2017, the 50 states collectively added more than 223,000 lane miles to their road networks. At an average cost of $24,000 per lane mile to keep…
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Virginia, Antifragility, and the Next Recession
In the previous post I argued that there are large pockets of hidden risk in the U.S. and global economies that could trigger a devastating economic downturn. I’m not predicting that a recession is imminent — I do not profess to see the future — but I would suggest that only fools would pretend that…
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“A Dozen Pockets of Extreme and Growing Risk”
The economy is chugging along at a 3% growth rate, unemployment is hitting record lows, productivity is surging. The economy looks like it’s in fantastic shape. A friend of mine and long-time Trump hater, normally disinclined to give the president credit for anything, marveled recently that the low-inflation, low-unemployment economy “is as good as it…
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A Pension System At Risk
Under a “shock” scenario in which Virginia Retirement System (VRS) investment returns replicated the disastrous performance of the 2008-2009 market crash, the state portion of the retirement plan would see an increase in unfunded liability of $6.9 billion. Employer contribution rates would have to increase to 22% of covered payroll from 13.5% now in order…
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(Fiscal) Winter Is Coming
Let me set the scene by reviewing a few numbers. The federal deficit is on course to hit $1 trillion annually by Fiscal Year 2020. With retiring Baby Boomers swelling Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security expenditures, deficits will increase inexorably for decades. The U.S. national debt stands at $21.7 trillion. As deficits pile up and…
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Fairfax Supervisors Face County’s Monster Pension Crunch
Once upon a time, way back in the year 2000, Fairfax County’s general-employee pension plan was amply funded at 109% of projected needs. But the funding ratio dropped severely during the last recession and has been hovering around 70% in recent years. Today unfunded pension liabilities for Virginia’s largest local government are roughly comparable in…
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Whispers of the “R” Word
With the stock market taking a beating, all of a sudden economists are uttering the “R” word — recession. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has put the odds of a U.S. recession beginning within 12 months at one in three — up from an 8% probability a year ago, reports the Wall Street Journal. Central Banks…
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Blue Wave Does Not Change Do-Nothing Consensus
The 2018 Congressional elections have been dubbed by some as “the most important mid-term elections in history,” but that’s mostly partisan blather. Democrats did indeed re-take control of the House of Representatives. But two more years of hyper-partisan gridlock will not change the nation’s perilous fiscal trajectory. While many bemoan the lack of consensus in…
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How Bad Can It Get? You Don’t Want to Know.
The United States is enjoying 112 months of uninterrupted economic expansion. We’re basking in one of the longest business cycles in American history — the average expansion since World War II has lasted 58 months. Unless someone has repealed the laws of economics, sooner or later, we’ll experience another recession. There is a widespread belief…
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Moody’s: Virginia Local Government Credit Quality Healthy despite High Debt Burdens
Moody’s, the bond-rating firm, has disseminated a new report on the credit quality of Virginia local governments — answering many of the questions we have been posing on this blog. The good news is that Moody’s rates Virginia’s business climate highly and says that local governments have “wide latitude” to protect their bond ratings by…
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Virginia Ill Prepared to Weather a Recession
I’m not sure how Virginia’s Secretary of Finance, Aubrey Layne, sleeps at night. He is by nature a fiscal conservative, and he was in frequent touch with the rating agencies that threatened earlier this year to downgrade Virginia’s prized AAA bond rating. While elected officials may ignore the fiscal warning signs, it’s Layne’s job to…