Fiscal economics concerns the effect of government financial activities on the private sector of the economy. The financial devices employed by the government consist of expenditures for services and for currently produced goods and real resources, the making of transfer payments such as subsidies, the receiving of transfer payments such as taxes, and the dealing in the old real assets and claims, including its own debt. More succinctly, one may think of government financial activities as purchases and sales of services, goods, and claims, and positive and negative transfer payments. Theoretically any financial action falls into one or both of these two classes. Debt operations, which at first glance may seem to have been left out, are covered because borrowing takes place by the sale of securities and lending by the purchase or retirement of debt.