The US Congressional Budget Office had already forecast that the federal deficit would exceed $1tn this year, but on 24 April 2020, it updated its predictions to suggest that the US federal deficit could reach $3.7tn or 18% of GDP in 2020. It is also predicting a deficit of $2.1tn or 10% of GDP in 2021.
These are substantially larger than the deficits experienced a decade ago during the financial crisis, reflecting a combination of a massive shock to the US economy and a series of large scale fiscal interventions on an unprecedented scale.
The CBO prediction is heavily caveated given the prospect of further fiscal interventions and the potential for a second wave of infection in the fall, so watch this space for further developments in the increasingly topical subject of accounting for governments.