US to take extraordinary steps to avert a default, says treasury secy

By Christopher Anstey and Viktoria Dendrinou

 

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said her department will start taking special accounting maneuvers as of Jan. 21 to avoid breaching the US debt limit, and urged lawmakers again to take steps to increase or suspend the statutory ceiling.

 

Yellen wrote in a letter to bipartisan congressional leaders Friday she was advising them “of the extraordinary measures that Treasury will begin using on January 21.” That will be a day after the Biden administration leaves office. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

 

The letter marks the second notification in the latest tussle over the debt limit, which kicked back in as of Jan. 2, and likely the last for Yellen before the Trump administration takes office Jan. 20. Congress had suspended the ceiling in 2023 after a close-fought battle by lawmakers to avert a default on federal obligations. The limit is currently set at about $36 trillion.

 

Some debt-market strategists have anticipated an easier path to an agreement to suspend or lift the cap given Republicans’ unified control of Congress and the White House once Donald Trump takes office again Jan. 20. Until that action is taken, however, the Treasury will need to deploy measures used repeatedly over the decades to avoid breaching the limit.

 

Trump’s nominee to succeed Yellen as Treasury chief, Scott Bessent, vowed at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday that there’d be no default on his watch.

 

Specific measures

 

Yellen advised that the Treasury’s extraordinary measures would begin by redeeming a portion of, and suspending full investments in, the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. It will also suspend additional investments of amounts credited to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund.

 

Those funds will be made whole after Congress acts on the debt ceiling, Yellen said. She gave no indication how long the accounting measures and Treasury’s cash balance would last. 

 

“The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future,” she wrote.

 

Should the Treasury become unable to issue fresh debt and then run out of cash, the US government would be in danger of defaulting on some financial obligations. Wall Street is already trying to handicap how long the US government has before it’s unable to pay its bills because of the newly re-imposed debt ceiling. That so-called X-date has been estimated by some strategists as looming around July or August.

 

In the event of congressional standoffs, investors tend to dump the Treasury bills most vulnerable to a potential default in favor of securities maturing before or after the X-date, creating a kink in the curve. Right now, though, the bill market is showing no signs of angst, given the uncertainties about the outlook.