System Stability Baseline for Private Payment-Rail Substitution: U.S. Inflation, Purchasing Power, Federal Deficits, and Fiscal System-Coupling, 1965–2025
Description
This dataset contains Figures 14–17 from Decker, Nicolin (2026), The Legal Tender Closure Gap Doctrine: Private Crypto Settlement, Transactional Use, and the Limits of Securities and Commodities Classification. The figures collectively establish a system-stability baseline for evaluating the conditions into which mainstream private crypto or stablecoin payment-rail substitution would enter. Figure 14, U.S. Consumer Price Inflation Since 1965 (FRED), presents the historical inflationary baseline, including the high-inflation period of the 1970s and early 1980s and the post-2020 inflation resurgence. Figure 15, Decline in U.S. Dollar Purchasing Power (FRED), presents the long-run purchasing-power baseline, illustrating the cumulative effect of inflation on the consumer dollar. Figure 16, U.S. Federal Deficit Trends (U.S. Treasury), presents the fiscal-pressure baseline, including elevated federal deficit conditions through fiscal year 2025. Figure 17, Fiscal Pressure and System-Coupling Risk in the United States, 1980–2025, integrates federal debt, federal revenue, and annual deficit behavior into a shared temporal framework to illustrate system-coupling pressure. The dataset’s purpose is not to claim that the United States financial system is structurally failing. Rather, it establishes that private payment innovation should be evaluated against the system it enters. A crypto or stablecoin payment rail may improve speed, cost, programmability, or settlement convenience, but those benefits must be analyzed alongside existing fiscal, inflationary, monetary, banking, and public-finance pressures. Figures 14–16 provide the underlying baseline conditions that support Figure 17’s integrated system-coupling analysis. Figure 17 presents three principal variables: Annual Federal Deficit, shown in nominal billions of U.S. dollars; Indexed Federal Revenue, indexed to 1980 = 100; and Indexed Federal Debt, also indexed to 1980 = 100. This framing allows proportional comparison across variables of different scale while preserving the distinction between stock and flow measures. The dataset supports the doctrine’s broader claim that new payment rails do not enter an empty system. They enter a system already carrying inflation history, purchasing-power decline, deficit pressure, bank-liquidity sensitivity, monetary-policy demands, and public-finance obligations. The figures are included to support transparency, reproducibility, and independent verification of the system-stability baseline used in the doctrine’s analysis of private payment-rail substitution.
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Steps to reproduce
Compile Figures 14–17 as the system-stability baseline for evaluating private crypto or stablecoin payment-rail substitution. Figure 14 uses the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED series for U.S. consumer price inflation. Figure 15 uses the FRED purchasing-power series for the consumer dollar. Figure 16 uses U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data and Monthly Treasury Statement materials to illustrate federal deficit trends through fiscal year 2025. To reproduce Figure 17, use Table 17, Integrated U.S. Fiscal System Dataset (1980–2024), located in The Legal Tender Closure Gap Doctrine. Table 17 provides the underlying dataset used to generate Figure 17 and organizes public federal data into a shared temporal frame so federal debt, federal revenue, and annual deficit behavior can be independently verified. For each selected year from 1980 through 2024, record: federal debt, indexed federal debt, federal revenue, indexed federal revenue, and annual federal deficit. Use 1980 as the base year. Calculate indexed federal debt as: selected-year federal debt divided by 1980 federal debt, multiplied by 100. Calculate indexed federal revenue as: selected-year federal revenue divided by 1980 federal revenue, multiplied by 100. Plot Indexed Federal Debt and Indexed Federal Revenue on the left y-axis with 1980 = 100. Plot Annual Federal Deficit on the right y-axis in nominal billions of U.S. dollars. Maintain annual deficit as a separate nominal flow variable rather than indexing it, because deficit is a yearly fiscal flow while debt is cumulative stock. Add historical phase bands to Figure 17 reflecting the doctrine’s interpretive framework: Stabilization and Globalization Phase, Shock Absorption and Fiscal Expansion Phase, and System-Coupling and Structural Stress Phase. These bands do not create new data; they provide temporal interpretation of observed fiscal movement and system-coupling pressure. This reproduction method ensures transparency. Figures 14–16 establish the inflationary, purchasing-power, and deficit-pressure baselines. Figure 17 integrates debt, revenue, and deficit behavior into a shared framework for evaluating whether private payment-rail substitution would enter a system already carrying visible fiscal, monetary, and public-finance pressure.