Monday, February 9, 2015

Janet and the interest expense problem

Janet is tasked with making ends meet at Treasury. 

Treasury interest payments have become more volatile:

January $15,104,681,505.17
December $86,460,237,565.98
November $23,427,024,656.86
October $8,702,166,816.21

These numbers come from Treasury direct and are the monthly interest costs due. So Janet's job is to make meet these numbers using her authority to tax the bond industry.  Here bond portfolio is really a taxes due portfolio and she spends it as necessary, trying to match the debt funding needs of the US Treasury. 

The QE is in effect a deflationary tax since Goldman Sachs is naturally a tax avoider. The method to avoid the bond tax is deflation, take the gains out in untaxable gains from the trade weighted dollar.

But Janet had to sell off $240 billion last year, in a sudden taxable event, and her current QE is needed to replenish her tax due portfolio.  So Janet is in effect targeting a 1/2 point deflation, the whole bit about 2 point inflation is pure fiction. Treasury interest costs are split into three parts, deflation, payments, and taxes. Probability says that Janet is likely caught in a spiral, ever increasing deflation has her tax collections increases.

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