US Treasury Secretary Warns About The After Effects of Shutdown

The U.S. economy has been hurt by a recent budget standoff in Washington and it is important that the nation does not go through another around of brinkmanship, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said on Sunday.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Lew said he was confident the economy, which he described as resilient, would recover from the 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government.

He described events leading to the shutdown, which eroded both business and consumer confidence, as a political crisis rather than an economic one.

“We know that from the shutdown, there was a loss of economic activity,” Lew said. “We need to make sure that government does not go through another round of brinkmanship. This can never happen again.”

A last minute deal in Congress pulled the country from the edge of an unprecedented debt default. It restored government funding through January 15 and extended its borrowing authority through February 7, though the Treasury Department might be able to stave off a default for several weeks past that point.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza