baronmunchausen

To cut through all the econ BS, basically because they stopped doing it for a while and markets went down a lot, then short term (overnight) lending rates start to spike higher and they freaked out.

The Federal Reserve (the Fed), the central bank of the United States, prints money and buys the national debt (treasuries) in order to increase bank reserves and stimulate the economy. The Fed is doing this to such an extent that they are now monetizing (printing and buying national debt) 70% of all the debt issued since October, roughly when they started . They refuse to call it quantitative easing (QE) (despite it meeting the literal definition of QE). It's why markets are going up despite zero increase in overall corporate profits and mediocre economic growth. Endless artificial stimulus like this, is why the economy shuffles from bubble to bust.

Yes, instead of 2019, it is now forecast to be 2020, as in the year that starts two days from now. It only ran a $1 billion surplus in 2019.

Companies could do double the R&D that they are doing, but nonetheless, they are doing more than before

+1 million

Corporate debt-to-GDP has never been higher