Even among small and medium-sized firms, the ratio of the so-called de facto debt-free firms -- defined as firms with cash and deposits that exceed their total amount of borrowings -- has continued to increase, recently exceeding 40 percent.13  Structural factors such as these lie behind the decline in financial institutions' profits.
This applies equally to private life as it does to the actions of governments and states. Ensuring fulfilment of the medium and long-term objective of a balanced budget while providing shortterm scope for “automatic stabilisers” (“flexibility criterion”). As you know, automatic stabilisers is a modern term for deficits resulting from cyclical tax revenue shortfalls and additional labour-market related expenditure.