November 5 Is New Debt Ceiling Deadline

Congress may have averted a government shutdown until December 11, but lawmakers will be under the gun to raise or suspend the debt ceiling long before then.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Thursday he now estimates that “on or about” November 5, Treasury is likely to exhaust special accounting measures that are keeping the country’s debt below its legal limit.

At that point, the Treasury Department would only be able to pay the country’s bills with the cash it has on hand — which Lew expects to be roughly $30 billion.

And that would not be enough to cover the bills on some days, which can amount to $60 billion.

“We anticipate that our remaining cash would be depleted quickly,” Lew wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.
Lew stressed if that happens, it would be the first time in the country’s history that the United States could not meet all of its obligations.

“There is no way to predict the catastrophic damage that default would have on our economy and global financial markets,” he added.

Via Debt ceiling deadline is now November 5 – Oct. 1, 2015

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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