As the national debt continues to increase by an average of $4.05 billion per day since September 28, 2007 even in 2009 the Obama administration noted that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 came in at a record of $1.42 trillion with a capital “T”. This was in 2009 but now the story has turned more severe as Timmy Geithner stated that the legal limit of $14.3 trillion would be reached within a few weeks from now (as of the end of April).
Although the political cards begin to play into whether to lift the debt limit, the Treasury secretary has a few options available such as borrowing money from the federal workers pension plan or paying investors their interest payments ahead of their obligations. Regardless, if the limit gets a raise the ramifications would mean higher interest rates for consumers since the bond yields will rise as investors lose more confidence in US treasuries. This stressful situation has occurred many times in the history of the US as the debt ceiling was raised six times between 1995 and 2007 but never has it been such a wide spread media publication. As the political big wigs debate on whether constricting further spending or cutting outlays while raising taxes the ones feeling the strain would be the US consumers as the cost of borrowing will eventually rise and perhaps at a frightful pace. As a final and last attempt by the US Treasury they have setup a site where the general public can donate:
https://www.pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?nc=1271991815942&agencyFormId=23779454
Article: http://www.garp.org/news-and-publications/overview/story.aspx?newsId=27689
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