The Great Debate

The cost of bank rescues and fiscal stimulus is the largest financial disaster to befall the federal government in peacetime history of the United States.

Only World Wars One and Two, and the American Civil War, caused larger deteriorations in the budget. Bank rescues, stimulus and tax cuts will bequeath a massive legacy of government debt, on course to reach a level not seen since 1947.

Stabilising government finances will require deep cuts in spending and sharp tax rises in the years ahead.

The need to refund the huge stock of maturing debt and issue new securities to cover deficits will also make it hard for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in a timely manner once the crisis has passed. Officials will face a protracted conflict between raising rates to head off inflation and keeping them low to stabilise the government debt market and contain government borrowing costs.

LESSONS FROM THE WAR

All the challenges now facing the Fed, Congress and President Barack Obama were prefigured by President Franklin Roosevelt in his annual budget message to Congress in January 1942, when the president outlined the enduring financial consequences of mobilising the government and the nation to fight a “total war”. Click here for pdf.

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

Yields on long-term U.S. Treasury debt continued to surge higher yesterday as the market braced for a future upturn in inflation and a tidal wave of long-dated issues that will be needed to fund the bank rescues and the emerging stimulus package.

Yields on three-year notes are up by around 47 basis points from their mid-December low. But yields on ten-year paper have soared 82 points and rates on the 30-year long bond have surged 114 points. Long-bond rates have retraced more than half their decline since the autumn (https://customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/USTREAS.pdf).

Back-end yields would probably have risen even further were it not for persistent hints the Federal Reserve is thinking about buying longer-dated issues to cap them. But the market has started to call the Fed’s bluff.