Get ready for screaming headlines beginning in about two months. Why? Because the U.S. will be coming up on a double deadline of debt and deficit inflection points.
The budget deficit issue will be hotly debated from March to next September and may result in a government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30, 2023, if progressive Democrats in the Senate and conservative Republicans in the House can’t agree on a budget for fiscal year 2024, which begins Oct. 1, 2023.
But there’s another train wreck coming even sooner.
This one involves the debt ceiling and the infamous “X-Date” when the U.S. could default on the national debt.
What exactly is the “debt ceiling”?
It’s a numeric limit on the total debt that the U.S. Treasury is allowed to issue. To be clear, the debt ceiling does not mean the Treasury cannot issue any new debt. It means that the Treasury cannot issue debt that increases the total outstanding above the ceiling.
With over $31 trillion of debt outstanding in maturities from four weeks to 30 years, there’s always some existing debt that’s maturing. The Treasury can issue new debt to pay off the old debt. It just can’t increase the total.
So if $20 billion of debt matures this week, the Treasury can issue $20 billion of new debt to keep the total constant. They just can’t issue $30 billion without breaking the ceiling. Treasury is at the ceiling now. The U.S. is still running deficits. How are the new deficits being financed if Treasury can only conduct the “rollover” operations described above?
The Treasury has to resort to “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the bills. You may have heard of the “trillion-dollar coin” idea. It won’t happen, but here’s how it works.
Good. Shut it down permanently. Only way we’ll be truly free.
The Treasury department had an auction of 10 year T-bills @4.005% … THEY GOT ZERO BIDS! No one wants our debt …
They even want to cheap out on the 1 Trillion dollar coin by using Platinum instead of gold. We are well on the way to Zimbabwe now and everyone who will still be eating will have to be a millionaire to do it.
Your feral government spending your grandkids, grandkids into oblivion! Abolish the feral government!
This is all about their need for war to reset the global financial order. They figure spend with abandon now using what amounts to monopoly money because after the war and reset the dollar along with all other currency will be canceled and the new digital currencies will be issued. Once that happens Kiss any vestiges of privacy or personal autonomy goodbye.