by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Biggest Drunken Sailors of all. Average interest rate on the Treasury debt spiked but is still only half of what it was in 2001.
Interest payments as a percent of tax receipts is the primary measure of the burden of the national debt on government finances – to what extent interest expense is eating into the national income. So the ballooning national debt, now at $34.6 trillion, comes together with rising interest rates on that debt. Interest rates have risen because inflation has roared back after decades of slumber. But inflation also inflates tax receipts over the longer term.
So higher inflation is now the third element in the mix – ballooning debt, higher interest rates, and higher inflation. In Q4, 2023: