{"id":58922,"date":"2021-08-07T10:18:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T15:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58922"},"modified":"2021-08-07T10:18:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T15:18:29","slug":"debt-ceiling-drama-yellen-begins-extraordinary-measures-to-stave-off-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58922","title":{"rendered":"Debt Ceiling Drama, Yellen Begins \u201cExtraordinary Measures\u201d to Stave Off Default"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Debt Ceiling Drama, Yellen Begins \u201cExtraordinary Measures\u201d to Stave Off Default<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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\"Debt<\/p>\n
Photo by\u00a0Senator Mark Warner<\/a>\u00a0CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Two years ago, the debt ceiling was lifted. Lifting the debt ceiling to make room for more government spending has been pretty routine since since 1917.<\/p>\n

Until now\u2026<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s quite likely that U.S. debt had already reached the\u00a0point of no return<\/a>\u00a0around three years ago, amazingly the situation might have just gotten\u00a0even worse<\/em>. Why?<\/p>\n

The debt ceiling extension that was granted back in 2019 has\u00a0expired.<\/strong>\u00a0Oops.<\/p>\n

Janet Yellen is taking what\u00a0are called \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0hopefully<\/em>\u00a0will keep the U.S. economy from spiraling into a historic disaster of defaults on bond payments and government obligations, skyrocketing interest rates, and massive inflation.<\/p>\n

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts the Treasury will\u00a0run out of cash in October or possibly November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So as reported above, the\u00a0U.S. risks default within 90 days if nothing is done<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yellen wrote a\u00a0strongly-worded letter<\/a>\u00a0to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describing the potential for \u201cirreparable harm\u201d if no action is taken.<\/p>\n

But it might already be too late\u2026<\/h2>\n

A closer look at the official U.S. debt reveals an unbelievable increase over the last 20 years:<\/p>\n

\"US<\/p>\n

Data from\u00a0St. Louis Fed<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That\u2019s a 4.6x rise in \u201cpublic debt,\u201d meaning money the U.S. government owes. It\u2019s called \u201cpublic\u201d debt because\u00a0all of America<\/em>\u00a0shares the responsibility for paying it back. It\u2019s public debt because the\u00a0public<\/em>, you and me, are on the hook for it.<\/p>\n

Amazing, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Even so, this isn\u2019t the first time \u201cextraordinary measures\u201d have kept the government spending machine humming along in response to debt-ceiling politics. But this\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0be the first time the clock will run out before a solution is reached.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly \u2014 or perhaps not \u2014 the White House appears to be simply\u00a0avoiding<\/em>\u00a0the current problem.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debt Ceiling Drama, Yellen Begins \u201cExtraordinary Measures\u201d to Stave Off Default Photo by\u00a0Senator Mark Warner\u00a0CC BY 2.0 Two years ago, the debt ceiling was lifted. Lifting the debt ceiling to make room for more government spending has been pretty routine since since 1917. Until now\u2026 While it\u2019s quite likely that U.S. debt had already reached […]<\/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":[18769,195,200,303,12584,451,10147,3650,5453,14907],"class_list":["post-58922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-birch-gold-group","tag-debt","tag-default","tag-fed","tag-government-spending","tag-janet-yellen","tag-us-debt-ceiling","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-us-treasury-department","tag-us-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58922","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=58922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58923,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58922\/revisions\/58923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}