4/12/2006

Federal deficit, a record for March

The federal deficit reached a record for March at $85.47 billion which was the highest in history for any March. The article blames the fact that some payments usually not made until April were made in March. Does that mean April's deficit is going to be drastically lower? Probably not. The deficity just seems to keep growing with no plan to reverse it. This last February we reached a record spending for one month of $119.20 billion. At least we didn't reach that record two months in a row.

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Will's post for spelling errors.

-1 on Seth's comment for grammatical errors.

What Will has pointed out is one of the dirty-little-secrets of people who are panicked about government borrowing: the monthly deficit changes drastically each month and nothing happens as a result. That suggests that the number is not very important.

Ashton is echoing my point effectively, but has confused debt and deficits a bit.

Seth's point is correct, but the reason we contrived that sort of solution through the legal system is precisely because people die. Governments and corporations don't, and therefore we can't analyze them the same way we do personal debt.