Moody’s: U.S. can forget about Triple-A rating if it violates debt ceiling

The Treasury is running out of time and money. [Moody’s]

 

The U.S. will lose its Triple-A rating if it violates the debt ceiling, even if it quickly acts to meet its obligations, a rating agency said Tuesday.

The U.S. is facing a looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling, and there’s concern that despite the insistence of figures including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Paul Ryan, it won’t get lifted in time. The Treasury has estimated it will reach the debt limit by Sept. 29.

Former CBO Director: The Fall Will Be “Very Scary”, Expect A Market Crash

Rudy Penner, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the person described by MarketNews international as “one of Washington’s most respected fiscal policy experts”, told MNI Wednesday in an exclusive interview that he expects a “very scary” fall 2017 due to fiscal issues, with market-disrupting battles ahead on both the debt ceiling and fiscal year 2018 spending. Penner directed the CBO under president Reagan, worked at high level posts in the White House budget office, and the Council of Economic Advisers. He is currently a fellow at the Urban Institute and sits on the board of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Coming Soon: The Mother Of All Debt Ceiling Crises

 

[Urgent Note: The nation’s future and a massive debt ceiling hangs in the balance as Trump pushes beyond the Comey hearings. That’s why I’m on a mission to send my new book TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… and How to Bring It Back to every American who responds, absolutely free. Click here for more details.]

While the Imperial City is frozen in the Second Coming of Comey, it doesn’t mean that the Washington spending machine is on pause. In fact, the Treasury’s cash balance yesterday stood at only $153 billion — down by $130 billion just since the tax season peak was reached on April 25th.

Uncle Sam has been burning cash at a rate of $3.2 billion per calendar day since then and has no more room to borrow. That’s because the public debt ceiling is frozen at its March 15th level ($19.808 trillion) and the mavens at the Treasury Building have run out of borrowing gimmicks.

The countdown to the mother of all debt ceiling crises is now well underway — with the nation’s net debt sitting at $19.69 trillion. That figure, in turn, is up nearly $500 billion since FY 2016 ended on September 30 with the net debt at $19.22 trillion.

Trump Avoid Debt Crisis ? “Extremely Unlikely” – Rickards

Remember to keep an eye on March 15th as mentioned in a previous post, the poison pill left by the Obama administration where “everything will grind to a halt”.

 

The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, estimates that inflation and real GDP will each grow at about 2% per year in the coming ten years. This means that nominal GDP, which is the sum of real GDP plus inflation, will grow at about 4% per year. Since debt is incurred and paid in nominal terms, nominal GDP growth is the critical measure of the sustainability of U.S. debt.

 

Trump Avoid Debt Crisis ? “Extremely Unlikely” says Rickards

The upcoming March 15 U.S. debt ceiling deadline is something that is being largely ignored by markets and most media for now. Despite it being just 9 trading days away. This will change in the coming days and is one of the many reasons why we are bullish on gold.

James Rickards writing for the Daily Reckoning today looks at the important ‘next signal to watch’ and explains that Trump and his advisors believe they can avoid a debt crisis through higher than average growth.

Stockman: “After March 15 Everything Will Grind To A Halt”

 

Two weeks after David Stockman warned that “the market is apparently pricing in a huge Trump stimulus. But if you just look at the real world out there, the only thing that’s going to happen is a fiscal bloodbath and a White House train wreck like never before in U.S. history” and exclaimed that, when looking at markets, “what’s going on today is complete insanity” he is back with another interview, this time with Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog in which he, once again warns, that a giant fiscal bloodbath is coming soon, and urges listeners to pay especially close attention to the March 15, 2017 debt ceiling deadline, at which point everything could “grind to a halt.”

US could start defaulting on debt ‘very soon’ warns Lew

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Monday that the US is on course to hit its so-called debt ceiling, the limit to which it can legally borrow, by the end of the month.

He called on Congress to raise it immediately to prevent the issue from harming the economic recovery, adding that the government would start defaulting on its debt “very soon” if it failed to act.

“Time is short. Congress needs to act to extend the nation’s borrowing authority, and it needs to act now,” Mr Lew said in a speech on Monday.

Renminbi rising: China’s ‘de-Americanized world’ taking shape?

China’s leadership will soon usher in bold reforms to support a domestic consumption-driven economic model, and globalizing the renminbi as an alternative store of wealth to the US dollar is at the center of the strategy.

The scathing commentary published by China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency calling for a ‘de-Americanized world’ was undoubtedly music to the ears of many in the developing world. The article – published during the recent fiscal deadlock – accused Washington of abusing its superpower status by engaging in unwarranted military conflicts, engineering regime changes with impunity, and mishandling its status as the issuer of the world reserve currency by exporting risk abroad. Xinhua’s commentary also called for drastic reforms of the IMF and World Bank to reflect the growing muscle of the developing world, and most significantly, “the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant US dollar.” 

China May Seize Control Of Entire US Financial System

Today acclaimed money manager Stephen Leeb stunned King World News when he warned “if the Chinese were ready right now to seize power, they could probably take control of our financial system today.”  Leeb also discussed the frightening implications of this for the United States as well as where the US is headed from here.

Leeb:  “I am focused on the chaos in Washington.  We need a situation where the politicians form some sort of cohesive unit that would suggest they are interested in growth and the well-being of the American people, but that doesn’t exist.  Frankly, I’m angry.  I’m an American.  I have kids that are growing up here, and as I said, I’m really, really angry about what is transpiring….

“I see what is happening as the beginning of the end.  I also continue to see what is taking place as a tremendous gift to China.  We are just giving power to China — just handing it over to them.  It’s as if we lost a big poker game to China, or we are in the process of losing.

Fitch warns it may lower U.S. credit rating

Fitch has placed its “AAA” U.S. credit rating on “rating watch negative,” a step that would precede an actual downgrade. The agency said it expects to conclude its review within the next six months. The firm says it expects the debt limit will be raised soon, but adds, “the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default.”

US default risk is real, Washington warns Wall Street

Money lenders trust America so implicitly that they generally dismiss the risk it won’t pay its debts. But in the US capital, fears are growing that political dysfunction might trigger the unthinkable.

A few years ago one would have said, ‘Don’t be silly. Of course they will raise the debt ceiling.’ But one can’t say that any more.  

Government veterans from both political parties are aghast that lawmakers openly speak of managing a default that could be triggered next month if they don’t authorise more borrowing.

On Poland and Detroit. Not For the Faint of Heart.

Back to finance.  Poland did exactly what I and a few others have been warning about for years with regards to private retirement accounts and pensions.  Poland confiscated 50% of all private pension funds last week.  PRIVATE pensions.

As Warren Pollock and I have been screaming, one of the largest chunks of collateral left in the system is private retirement money, both in the form of 401(k)s and IRAs and in private pension accounts.  In the U.S., the latest data for 2012 shows that there are now $10.5 Trillion in private 401k and IRA holdings, with another $9 Trillion in pensions and annuities.

The regime has been fairly open about its plans to “nationalize”, read CONFISCATE, this collateral and implement a system of “mandatory retirement savings accounts”, which will be just another confiscatory redistribution into the hands of the oligarchs and their cronies.  This what Poland just did.  This is what MF Global was in its essence.  This is what Cyprus was, except the Cypriot confiscation was done to demand deposit accounts instead of retirement accounts, which is now termed a “bail-in” – but it is all of the same stripe, namely the utter destruction of the notion of private property and the redistribution of all wealth into the hands of the oligarchs.   In Poland, the private pension paradigm has now also been destroyed because no one will want to put money into a private pension after this knowing that it can and will be stolen by the government at any time with zero redress.

US ‘seriously’ considering $1 trillion coin to pay off debt

The US is “seriously” considering creating a $1 trillion platinum coin to write down part of its debt to stop the world’s largest economy defaulting as early as next month, according to financial analyst Cullen Roche.

…

“I know it’s been spoken about at the White House and a number of prominent people, including congressman [sic], are talking about it,” he said.