Dean Baker

United States: The nonsense battle over debt Dean Baker Policy debates in Washington are moving ever further from reality as a small elite moves to strip benefits that the vast majority need and support. The battle over raising the debt ceiling is playing a central role in this effort. The United States is running extraordinarily large budget deficits. The size of the annual deficit peaked at 10% of GDP in 2009, but it is still running at close to 9% of GDP this year.

The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5% in March as the economy shed another 663,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the job loss reported for March, and upward revisions of 84,000 for the prior two months, the economy has lost an average of 684,000 jobs per month since November 2008.