by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
The Deficit-to-GDP ratio and Debt-to-GDP ratio get even uglier.
To what extent do interest payments that the US government pays on its ballooning and gigantic debt eat up tax receipts? That is a key question about the US fiscal mess.
Sharply higher tax receipts in Q4 and slowing growth of interest payments in Q4 cause this ratio of “interest payments to tax receipts” to dip to 35.6% in Q4 from Q3. But year-over-year, it worsened by 1 percentage point, based on a measure of tax receipts released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis as part of its second revision of Q4 GDP.