BUDGET DEFICIT LOWER THAN EVER ACCORDING TO GOVERNMENT GRAPH..7 YEAR LOW

[Straw Man]

You fucking idiot. By your standards you're basically saying that one has nothing to do the other. Is that what you're trying to say? I absolutely know the difference. So answer, do you think one has nothing to do with other?

I'm saying I gotta know the owner of that debtclock website and it's source of data (all data points)

if the sources are from places that I personally deem to be unnaceptable then I can just ingore them or say it's horseshit

You can totally understand that.....right?

That your own standard as defined on this thread

Surely you must remember that and agree that it's an acceptable way to decide what data to include or ignore when forming an opinion

right?

[andreisdaman]

Maddow is a loon. Aside from Morning Joe, everything I've seen on MSNBC is very much "entertainment", and not news.

We should never run a deficit. Too bad that chart only goes back to 2008 and shows the deficit to only be shrinking since then and not "EVER" like the thread title says... 

Look back further and see that deficits in the last 7 years have been higher than any time since WW2. And this "recovery" has also been the worst since then.

And yes, before someone blames Bush, they were also going up under Bush.

But we should never run a deficit.

Here's something really scary: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEGDQ188S

When I said lower than ever, I meant under Obama...I did add "7 year low".....

[2Thick]

Are you trying to get him to answer the question for you?

How is running record low deficits (meaning creating surplus) and reducing hte deficit at the fastest rate in history bad?

We're not running record low deficits, we're not in a surplus, and the rate of reduction is not the fastest in history.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FYFSGDA188S

[Straw Man]

We're not running record low deficits, we're not in a surplus, and the rate of reduction is not the fastest in history.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FYFSGDA188S

please clarify your statement

Here's the graph in your link
The deficit is going down (approaching zero as a % of GDP)
No one ever said we're in a surplus at the moment (note the last surplus was toward the end of the Clinton Administration and then it dived into a deep deficit under that fiscially responsible Republican POTUS who's name I can't recall)

[Mclovin]

ooh, the goofy usdebtclock site

Hey fake coach

tell us what you know about that site and it's source data

If it's from the CBO I may just want to call it horseshit...you know just to be consistent your prior beliefs.

If it's not even from a source like that then just tell us the source, who site it is, where their info is from etc.

I wouldn't have bothered to mention it but I know stuff like that is important to you

There are a couple similar websites that have these national "debt clocks" on them. Some of them don't list a source, but for those that do, it looks like they get their data from the US Treasury, which typically reports it daily (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current). Then they can just use the budget deficit, as well as outlook provided by the government on future debt levels, to determine how fast to increase it on their clock. It isn't actually going up at the exact rate shown on the clock, they just normalize the data over time based on the estimated increase. See below for an explanation:

What determines the speed of the clock?
Some days the debt actually goes down, and others it goes up extra fast. Since no one knows what it will do on any given day we just show it increasing at its average rate, because that’s the best guess. But what average rate?
The Office of Management and Budget at the White House predicts the “Gross Federal Debt” for the next few years. At the end of the fiscal year 2005, (Sept. 30 2005) they list the debt at $8,031.4 billion. They predict it will be $676 billion higher at the end of the next fiscal year. That is the average rate of increase per year assumed by the clock.

[Mclovin]

And the budget deficit has definitely gone down over the past several years; this can be verified from pretty much any source. Now people can certainly argue whether the Republican controlled Congress or President Obama are more responsible for the shrinking deficits, but I don't see how anyone can actually try to claim that the deficit hasn't shrunk.

[avxo]

The shrinking of the deficit - just like the "Clinton surpluses" - are mostly the result of clever accounting tricks. Our debt is still through the roof, don't you worry

[Mclovin]

The shrinking of the deficit - just like the "Clinton surpluses" - are mostly the result of clever accounting tricks. Our debt is still through the roof, don't you worry

What would those "clever accounting tricks" be? Anytime economists make a change in terms of methodology, it is always applied to prior data retroactively. So any changes in how the data is collected or presented would reflect back in time in order to normalize the data so that comparative analysis can still be done.

[Mclovin]

Economists usually look at the deficit as a percentage of GDP, rather than just looking at the raw numbers. There is nothing wrong with running a defecit, so long as your economy is growing and can support it. Usually anything around 3% or less would be considered optimal. This first chart shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP under Bush (2001-2009), and the second shows it under Obama (although it only goes through 2014). These are custom charts from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The numbers are negative because we are in a deficit; for a surplus, they would be positive.

[avxo]

What would those "clever accounting tricks" be? Anytime economists make a change in terms of methodology, it is always applied to prior data retroactively. So any changes in how the data is collected or presented would reflect back in time in order to normalize the data so that comparative analysis can still be done.

You might want to investigate the difference between public debt and what is referred to as "intra-government" debt (that is, when the government essentially borrows money from itself) and how that relates to the numbers being reported vis-à-vis deficits and surpluses.

I am currently on an iPhone and don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet that for every year where there was a "surplus" reported under Clinton, the intra-government debt for that year when up by about as much as the claimed surplus as the Government borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. Whoever said that social security wasn't useful? It's all kinds of useful when you want to do accounting tricks! And silly ole Al Gore wanted to put the funds in a lock box...

[andreisdaman]

There are a couple similar websites that have these national "debt clocks" on them. Some of them don't list a source, but for those that do, it looks like they get their data from the US Treasury, which typically reports it daily (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current). Then they can just use the budget deficit, as well as outlook provided by the government on future debt levels, to determine how fast to increase it on their clock. It isn't actually going up at the exact rate shown on the clock, they just normalize the data over time based on the estimated increase. See below for an explanation:

What determines the speed of the clock?
Some days the debt actually goes down, and others it goes up extra fast. Since no one knows what it will do on any given day we just show it increasing at its average rate, because that’s the best guess. But what average rate?
The Office of Management and Budget at the White House predicts the “Gross Federal Debt” for the next few years. At the end of the fiscal year 2005, (Sept. 30 2005) they list the debt at $8,031.4 billion. They predict it will be $676 billion higher at the end of the next fiscal year. That is the average rate of increase per year assumed by the clock.

Good read....thanks

[andreisdaman]

You might want to investigate the difference between public debt and what is referred to as "intra-government" debt (that is, when the government essentially borrows money from itself) and how that relates to the numbers being reported vis-à-vis deficits and surpluses.

I am currently on an iPhone and don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet that for every year where there was a "surplus" reported under Clinton, the intra-government debt for that year when up by about as much as the claimed surplus as the Government borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. Whoever said that social security wasn't useful? It's all kinds of useful when you want to do accounting tricks! And silly ole Al Gore wanted to put the funds in a lock box...

thanks for the info

[Mclovin]

You might want to investigate the difference between public debt and what is referred to as "intra-government" debt (that is, when the government essentially borrows money from itself) and how that relates to the numbers being reported vis-à-vis deficits and surpluses.

I am currently on an iPhone and don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet that for every year where there was a "surplus" reported under Clinton, the intra-government debt for that year when up by about as much as the claimed surplus as the Government borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. Whoever said that social security wasn't useful? It's all kinds of useful when you want to do accounting tricks! And silly ole Al Gore wanted to put the funds in a lock box...

Intragovernmental debt is currently about $5 trillion and is included in the $18 trillion number that you hear about in the news and see on these debt clock websites. However, people do sometimes make the argument that we should only worry about the public debt, which is currently about $13 trillion, on the grounds that intragovernmental debt is basically money that we owe to ourselves. Anyway, here is a chart showing the breakdown of public vs. intragovernmental debt as of Aug. 31, 2015. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2015/opds082015.pdf

If you look at the document I linked to below, you will see that intragovernmental debt has increased at a fairly stable rate over the past several decades (it is the column that says "held by federal government accounts").
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2016-TAB/xls/BUDGET-2016-TAB-8-1.xls

But even if you did have a large increase in intragovernmental debt, that shouldn't have an effect on the deficit/surplus, as this is just looking at total cash receipts minus total cash outlays. So for example, let's say the government borrows $500 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for an infrastructure project. That $500 billion cash outlay that goes toward that project will be recorded the same, regardless of whether it was funded with public debt or by borrowing from Social Security. The cash received from the debt, as well as the principal repayments on debt don't factor into the deficit calculation, only the interest expense. Therefore, the basic accounting shouldn't change regardless of the type of debt that is used to finance the deficit.