{"id":526502,"date":"2010-04-13T11:18:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T15:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21006005"},"modified":"2010-04-13T11:18:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T15:18:29","slug":"hows-that-rebalancing-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/526502","title":{"rendered":"How’s that rebalancing coming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"TODAY brings news on the state of both of America’s big deficits\u2014budget and trade. The Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a> some surprising news on the state of the federal budget; higher than expected tax revenues combined with lower than expected spending on financial rescues to produce a first half fiscal performance than originally forecast. As things stand, the federal deficit is on pace to come in below $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010, while the administration initially projected a shortfall of about $1.6 trillion.<\/p>\n

Budget numbers may yet deteriorate in the second half of the year, but the news is a positive sign for growth, although it also suggests that there is more room in the budget<\/a> to address continued labour market weakness, which has persisted despite an output recovery.<\/p>\n

And then there is the trade deficit<\/a>. American exports have risen strongly. Total goods and services exports in February were 14.3% higher than their level a year previous. Unfortunately, imports were up more, 20.5%, and so the trade deficit increased. This isn’t that surprising. The American current account position improved significantly through the recession because global trade collapsed, and with a return to global and domestic growth it was inevitable that it would regain most of its previous level. The question is to what extent the structural current account deficit has improved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

It remains to be seen where that glide path will end. If it returns to the level of early 2008, that is not a positive sign for the nature of American recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TODAY brings news on the state of both of America’s big deficits\u2014budget and trade. The Washington Post reports some surprising news on the state of the federal budget; higher than expected tax revenues combined with lower than expected spending on financial rescues to produce a first half fiscal performance than originally forecast. As things stand, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}