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Zorro

(18,911 posts)
Wed Feb 22, 2023, 12:54 PM Feb 2023

U.S. Could Default on Debt as Early as Summer, New Estimate Says [View all]

Source: New York Times

The Bipartisan Policy Center said the nation could run out of cash this summer or early fall if Congress did not raise the debt limit.

The United States faces a default sometime this summer or early fall if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt ceiling, a Washington think tank warned on Wednesday.

The projection from the Bipartisan Policy Center is the latest estimate of when the government could run out of cash to pay its bills. The nation, which borrows huge sums to help pay for everything from military salaries to Social Security benefits, hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing cap on Jan. 19. Since then, the Treasury Department has been employing what are known as extraordinary measures to ensure that the government has enough to pay what it owes, including payments to bondholders.

“We anticipate that those emergency measures, as well as the cash that Treasury has on hand, will most likely be exhausted at some point during the summer or early fall,” Shai Akabas, the center’s director of economic policy, said during a briefing on Wednesday morning.

Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the department’s ability to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt could be exhausted between July and September. That estimate was slightly more favorable than what Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen suggested when she told Congress last month that her department’s ability to keep financing the country’s obligations could be exhausted in June.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/business/economy/us-debt-limit.html?unlocked_article_code=yrGlsf3GKPpJoY1IxIMRhXQpr2-1GqWv48Gcola-JOyocj6d0_CuvT8Y-Tf2bfWZSEUsR-VstD8Bx1EZihYM_tyEis5dI8yhfzK75EYT-HOLCtnxwHeNJS0GoKs_IfOkZhRHHbW4FGWPix47TOjkywVOK1okdXfILZXdF_wrlNV3mkplJezA-qenCwas5Z2Y2qcuPKasAwi76-rBlGdA_1JInu4HyWQn4JI7v-trqGSk9j36ub-DIHC0EXMcQKTZdbchInHLLtb8rlPqmUt591VevF71ILWDEaJrY0MSjurU4LYXE45HrS23CJd2S1VTDijEfZVSCRG2i_ZTPj6eKg&smid=url-share

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