Wednesday, January 26, 2011

CBO's Revised Budget Sees 2011 Deficit Rising By $500 Billion To $1.5 Trillion; $4 Trillion In Deficit Through 2013 Guarantees QE3+

From ZeroHedge:
No surprise: the projected deficit just went up by another half a trillion: "For 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws remain unchanged, the federal budget will show a deficit of close to $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of GDP." This is up from $1.07 trillion: a very small margin of error there. But don't worry - like true Keynesians the CBO expects that future deficits will have no choice but to go down: "The deficits in CBO's baseline projections drop markedly over the next few years as a share of output and average 3.1 percent of GDP from 2014 to 2021.

Those projections, however, are based on the assumption that tax and spending policies unfold as specified in current law. Consequently, they understate the budget deficits that would occur if many policies currently in place were continued, rather than allowed to expire as scheduled under current law."

So between 2010's $1.3 trillion, 2011 $1.5 trillion, and 2012's revised $1.1 trillion, we have $3.9 trillion just in deficit costs to plug. And as Zero Hedge has repeatedly demonstrated the actual debt to be issued is usually about 33% higher than the deficit funding need, meaning that over the next 3 years the US will need to issue about $5 trillion in debt. Which means further debt monetization is guaranteed as foreign investors have now fully withdrawn and the Fed is all alone in gobbling up every dollar in gross issuance. QE3 is guaranteed and we are stunned that the market continues not to realize this....MUCH MORE