Thursday, March 4, 2021

The 2021 Long-Term Budget Outlook from the CBO

 This was just released by the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57038

This is complete garbage and gobbledygook, designed to obfuscate rather than enlighten.  They state numbers only as a percentage of GDP, not in real numbers, yet they don't state what GDP is every year.  The word "trillion" is used only once in the entire document.  I can't tell after a quick perusal if they even include the current stimulus bill.

I will give them a tiny bit of credit for this one line in fine print on page 11:

  Gross Domestic Product at the End of the Period (Trillions of dollars) 22.0 32.9 46.8 66.0

The four numbers are the estimated GDP in the years 2021, 2031, 2041, and 2051.  They don't give any further details.  I guess you are supposed to interpolate.  There may be other CBO documents that state the estimated GDP but I don't see them referenced here.

I will wait until the current porkulus bill passes in a few days, and the Treasury issues debt to pay for it, which the Fed will buy.  So maybe sometime in May or June would be a good time to analyze this and do my own forecast.

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Update: Here is the last GDP forecast, issued by the CBO on Feb 11, 2021

Gross Domestic Product 21,000 21,951 23,082 24,066 25,127 26,249 27,359 28,425 29,506 30,623 31,751 32,933.

Each number is the end of year estimated GDP starting with 2020 and ending with 2031.

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