FedPulse

FedPulse works with two different debt universes depending on the context:

• Total federal debt (GFDEBTN, ~$37.6T) — used for headline metrics including Total Debt Outstanding, Weighted Average Rate, and Annual Interest Expense. This includes both marketable securities and intragovernmental holdings (~$7.5T held by trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare).
• Marketable securities (~$28.9T from MSPD) — the five classes of tradeable Treasury instruments (Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, and Floating Rate Notes) that form the basis of the roll-schedule analysis and scenario projections. These are the instruments that must be refinanced at prevailing market rates when they mature.

Although the roll-schedule analysis is centered on marketable securities, the scenario engine also models intragovernmental debt repricing. Intragov holdings (~$7.5T) are primarily short-term certificates of indebtedness that reprice at a statutory rate defined by 31 USC 3111(b) — the average market yield on outstanding marketable securities with 4+ years remaining maturity. The engine estimates this statutory rate from the scenario's yield curve weighted by outstanding amounts in each maturity bucket, then models ~59% annual turnover (20%/quarter) of the intragov portfolio. The resulting intragov interest expense is added to the marketable interest expense to produce total projected interest expense.

Sourced from FRED series GFDEBTN — total federal debt including intragovernmental holdings, reported quarterly in USD millions by the Treasury. Displayed in trillions. If GFDEBTN is unavailable, falls back to the sum of marketable outstanding amounts from MSPD (Bills + Notes + Bonds + TIPS + FRNs).

Primary source: Treasury's published average interest rate on total interest-bearing debt, which covers all federal obligations including intragovernmental holdings. This rate is sourced from Treasury's Fiscal Data API (avg_interest_rates endpoint).

Fallback: if the published rate is unavailable, WAR is computed from CUSIP-level MSPD data. Each security's effective rate is weighted by outstanding principal — Notes and Bonds use their stated coupon, Bills use actual auction discount rates from TreasuryDirect, TIPS use their stated real coupon, and FRNs use the current Fed Funds rate as a proxy. Securities with missing rate data are excluded to avoid understating the effective borrowing cost.

The average remaining time-to-maturity across all outstanding marketable securities (from MSPD), weighted by outstanding principal. Anchored to the MSPD record date. Expressed in years.

Estimated as total federal debt outstanding (GFDEBTN) multiplied by the weighted average rate. Because both inputs include intragovernmental holdings, this figure represents the government's total interest obligation — not just the marketable portion. This is an approximation; actual interest expense varies with the timing of coupon payments, new issuance, and inflation adjustments on TIPS.

Computed from the latest BEA quarterly data: federal interest payments divided by federal revenue (NIPA Table 3.2). Both values are Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rates (SAAR) in USD millions.

Total federal debt (GFDEBTN) divided by GDP (BEA Table 1.1.5). Both values are converted to a common unit before computing the ratio. Falls back to a static GDP estimate if BEA data is unavailable.

The trailing 12-month federal surplus or deficit, computed by summing the 12 most recent monthly observations from FRED series MTSDS133FMS (Monthly Treasury Statement). This cash-basis figure aligns with what Treasury reports and updates monthly as new MTS data is published. If fewer than 12 months of MTS data are available, falls back to the latest BEA quarterly expenditure-minus-revenue figure (SAAR, already annualized).

The scenario engine models debt refinancing over a chosen horizon (1Y, 3Y, 5Y, or 10Y). For each quarter, securities maturing in that period are removed from the portfolio and refinanced at the scenario's yield curve rates, matched by remaining maturity to the appropriate tenor bucket. The weighted average rate and annual interest expense are recalculated after each refinancing event.

The engine runs two parallel projections:

• Static Debt — total marketable outstanding remains constant. Maturing securities are replaced one-for-one at the scenario's rates, with no net new issuance.
• Projected Debt Issuance — total outstanding grows according to CBO's projected “Debt Held by the Public” trajectory (from Table 1-1 of the Budget and Economic Outlook). CBO's annual end-of-fiscal-year debt levels are linearly interpolated to quarterly targets. Each quarter, net new issuance equals the difference between the CBO target and current outstanding, distributed across security types (Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, FRNs) in proportion to the current MSPD composition. If CBO debt data is not available, falls back to accumulating CBO projected deficits each quarter.

Both projections include intragovernmental interest expense modeled via the statutory rate mechanism described above.

When CBO data is available, scenario charts include projected revenue and deficit trajectories from CBO as reference lines. The interest-to-revenue ratio at the projection horizon uses CBO's projected revenue for the corresponding fiscal year.

Pre-computed scenarios use three yield curve sources:

• Current Curve — the latest Treasury yield curve from FRED (DGS1MO–DGS30).
• Market Forwards — forward rates implied by the current yield curve, representing the market's expectation for future rates.
• Historical — rate environments from 2000, 2006, and 2019, representing different interest rate regimes.

Pre-computed results are cached and refreshed after each data update. Custom scenarios allow users to input arbitrary rate shifts and are computed on-the-fly with rate limiting (10 requests/minute per IP).

Revenue, expenditure, deficit, debt-to-GDP, and interest-to-revenue charts show quarterly BEA actuals. When CBO data is available, projected values extend 3 years beyond the latest historical quarter as lighter-shaded bars or dashed lines.

This section compares CBO's projected net interest expense against the interest expense implied by the current yield curve and the Treasury's maturity schedule (from the Projected Debt Issuance scenario). Because CBO's “net interest” excludes intragovernmental interest (the government paying itself), the market-implied figure also subtracts the projected intragov component for an apples-to-apples comparison. The market-implied deficit holds CBO's spending and revenue projections constant, substituting only the interest expense component.

The comparison is truncated at the last fiscal year with full quarterly coverage from the scenario projection to avoid partial-year artifacts.