{"id":24815,"date":"2017-08-22T18:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T23:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24815"},"modified":"2017-08-22T18:00:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T23:00:26","slug":"us-gross-national-debt-to-spike-by-800-billion-in-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24815","title":{"rendered":"US Gross National Debt to Spike by $800 Billion in October?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/08\/21\/us-gross-national-debt-to-spike-by-800-billion-in-october\/\">US Gross National Debt to Spike by $800 Billion in October?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>The other option: too ugly to even imagine.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is zero chance, no chance we won\u2019t raise the debt ceiling,\u201d swore Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>He who couldn\u2019t get his Republican ducks all lined up in a row to get any major legislation passed this year was confident that the Senate would pass a bill that would raise the debt ceiling so that the government could continue to pay for things that Congress told the Government to pay for, and so that the government could service its debts, rather than default on them.<\/p>\n<p>Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was there with him, pleading once again for a \u201cclean\u201d debt-ceiling increase,\u00a0according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/mitch-mcconnell-zero-chance-u-s-fails-to-raise-debt-ceiling-1503336757\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>. His \u201cmagic super Treasury powers\u201d that allow the government to conserve cash to avoid having to issue more debt will expire at the end of September, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not about spending money,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is about paying for what we\u2019ve spent, and we cannot put the credit of the United States on the line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The debt ceiling is just under $20 trillion. While the government can issue bonds to redeem maturing bonds \u2013 and it does this all the time \u2013 it cannot allow the gross national debt to go beyond the debt ceiling.<\/p>\n<p>But because it has to continue to pay for things that Congress mandated in its various spending bills over the years, the Treasury scrounges up the money from other government accounts, robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. For example it temporarily short-changes the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. These \u201cextraordinary measures,\u201d as they\u2019re called, or the \u201cmagic super Treasury powers,\u201d as Mnuchin called it, run out after a while.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Gross National Debt to Spike by $800 Billion in October? The other option: too ugly to even imagine. \u201cThere is zero chance, no chance we won\u2019t raise the debt ceiling,\u201d swore Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday. He who couldn\u2019t get his Republican ducks all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,15682,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-24815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-us-gross-national-debt","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24816,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24815\/revisions\/24816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}