Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller took aim at the latest budget deal between President Donald Trump and top Congressional lawmakers on Tuesday, saying it will only exacerbate the country’s massive national debt problem.
“The obscene budget is just another example of an unintended consequence of global central banks cancelling market signals,” Druckenmiller told CNBC via email on Tuesday. “Politicians will continue to engage in myopic policies until markets revolt. And the longer these policies are sustained, the bigger the bill we will leave the next generation.”
Druckenmiller’s email came a day after Trump announced on his Twitter feed that a deal had been reached on raising the debt ceiling and fiscal spending over the next two years in a compromise with top Democrats Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader.
The deal restores the government’s ability to borrow to pay its bills into the next administration in 2021, be it the incumbent, Trump, or one of his Democratic challengers. It also raises U.S. discretionary spending up to $1.37 trillion in the fiscal year 2020, an increase from $1.32 trillion this year.
Among Wall Street and the few politicians left who still care about things like the ballooning national debt and fiscal responsibility, Druckenmiller and others are calling for spending cuts. Projections from Trump’s own budget office put the debt at $29 trillion by the time his potential eight years are up. The debt was a little over $19 trillion when Trump was inaugurated, and is currently about $22 trillion.
In June Druckenmiller told CNBC that mounting corporate debt is putting the country in dire straits for when the next recession hits.
“We are in worse shape for a recession now than if things had slowed down,” Druckenmiller in June. “The biggest problem is what (former Fed Chair Janet) Yellen did. We had a booming economy, fairly early cycle. I know I talk too much about the Fed, but at the time I said they should sneak one in every time they can until they get to some normal rate,” Druckenmiller said. “We had that whole period in 2016 where, in my opinion, they could have gotten to 3.5 or 4, we’ll never know but they could have at least tried.”
“Once confidence turns down, you have to deal with the hand you’re dealt, and (Fed) Chairman (Jay) Powell has now got a tough situation on his hands. I deeply, deeply believe in a capitalist system you need a hurtle rate for investment and if that rate in not up there around 3 or 4 (percent), people are going to get crazy. Investors are going to get crazy, corporations are going to get crazy, zombies are going to stay in business and we had the opportunity to get there.”
Druckenmiller is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Duquesne Family Office, which was preceded by Duquesne Capital Management, a firm he ran from 1981 to 2010.
