I always check Wolf Richter’s column. Often it’s “not in my department”, but sometimes he provides a huge SO THAT’S WHY!
His latest AHA is a description of the Treasury General Account, which is exactly like a normal checking account. All regular income (taxes, fees, bond sales) is deposited in the TGA, and all regular expenses (salaries, subsidies, purchases, bond redemptions) are withdrawn from the TGA. Like normal checking accounts, there’s no firm legal requirement to keep it at a certain size, so there’s no idiotic “debt ceiling” drama. The treasury just tries to keep it over 800 billion, in the same way that I try to keep my checking account over 2000.
This was never mentioned in any economics texts, and it’s never mentioned by other financial media or politicians. We get the idea that everything in the government is abstract shit, able to be moved around and created and deleted by random political actions. In fact the government does operate like a business or a household, we just never hear about it.
Polistra's Mill 