US treasury secretary issues warning on debt ceiling
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the government has reached its debt ceiling, requiring accounting manoeuvres to continue paying its bills. It sets the stage for a political conflict in Congress over lifting the debt ceiling that could severely impact the stability of the US dollar and the financial system.
In a letter to Congress last week, Yellen said that as of this Thursday the outstanding debt of the US was projected to reach the statutory limit of just under $31.4 trillion. The Treasury would “need to start taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations.”
She said such measures only allowed the government to meet its obligations for a limited period.
“It is therefore crucial that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit. Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”
Yellen said it was not possible to provide an exact estimate of how long the Treasury could continue to operate with extraordinary measures, but it was unlikely actual cash would run out before June.
However, financial markets would be impacted well before then because “in the past even threats that the US government might fail to meet its obligations have caused real harms, including the only credit rating downgrade in the history of our nation in 2011.”
In 2011, opposition by so-called “Tea Party” Republicans to raising the debt ceiling under the Obama administration without massive cuts in social spending, meant the US came close to a default. A deal was reached, but not before Standard and Poor’s had downgraded US debt from its top rating to which it has not been restored.
The deal, brokered by then vice-president Joe Biden, involved significant cuts in government spending.
Twelve years on, the dynamics of debt ceiling politics are potentially even more explosive because of the further shift to the right in the Republican party as revealed by the critical role of its leading members in the Trump coup attempt of January 6, 2021, and the inordinate power of a fascistic cabal which forced 15 votes on the election of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy was only elected after the so-called House Freedom Caucus extracted major concessions giving it significant powers to determine procedures and the legislative agenda.
Among the measures agreed to by McCarthy was a change to procedural rules that would allow only one member of the House to move no confidence in the speaker. This means that in any negotiations between the Republicans and the administration on the debt ceiling McCarthy could face the prospect of being removed if he does not come up with a deal which meets demands for sweeping cuts in spending.
At this stage both sides are staking out their positions. The Biden administration claims it will not make budget cuts as part of any deal because lifting the debt ceiling does not involve new spending measures but is needed to honour commitments made in legislation passed by Congress.
Nor will it take executive action outside Congress to avoid a default. In line with Biden’s commitment to work with Republicans as they careen further to the right and outright fascist elements acquire even greater powers, White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the administration was not considering any measures that went around Congress.
The debt ceiling should be lifted without conditions and “there’s going to be no negotiation over it.” But as the experience of 2011 shows, such reassurances are worthless.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates has said “the president and the country” would not stand for cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid or other social programs as part of a deal on the debt ceiling.
But McCarthy believes those issues are very much on the table. Action on the debt ceiling was part of his campaign to secure the speakership—a position he repeated on Thursday, saying, “spending is out of control” and “we cannot continue around the same process.”
He clearly thinks, with good reason, that the administration, headed by the man who brokered the 2011 deal, will move. He said he had a “very good conversation with the president when he called me and I told him I’d like to sit down with him and work through these challenges.”
The release of the Yellen letter and the prospect of a crisis going beyond that of 2011, has sparked expressions of concern because both political and financial conditions are even more toxic than they were then.
According to Nancy Vanden Houten of the think tank Oxford Economics: “Most policymakers would prefer to limit a debt crisis, but the leverage given to the hardline Republicans in the House raises the odds that one will occur.”
The Financial Times reported that business groups are “getting nervous” and cited comments from Suzanne Clark, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby group.
Clark said she had heard from members a “clear, emphatic emotion not to default on our debt, to not play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States.”
The economic and financial situation is more precarious than it was in 2011. At that time the US Federal Reserve was pumping money into the financial system under its quantitative easing program. Today, it is imposing a tightening monetary regime to batter down the wage demands of workers in the face of the highest inflation in 40 years, leading to turbulence in financial markets.
Even the threat of a default will raise questions about the stability of the US financial system and the role of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency in a situation where there is increased nervousness, expressed in the increase of gold purchases in recent months.
As the Wall Street Journal commented, the standoff over the debt limit “comes at a fragile time” for the US economy as there are concerns that the Fed’s interest rate increases could tip the US economy into recession under conditions where global growth is slowing.
“Uncertainty over the reliability of Treasurys—a safe-haven asset around the world that underpins much of the financial system—could further cloud the economic outlook,” it said.
In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the $24 trillion US Treasury market froze when, for several days, no buyers could be found for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world.
This crisis was only alleviated though a massive intervention of the Fed which pumped around a further $4 trillion into financial markets and provided dollars to other central banks.
None of the issues which caused the freeze has been resolved and there have been reports since then of a lack of liquidity in the US debt market. An outright default or even the threat of one could have major consequences both for the US and global financial system.
VIDEO:
Here's how a trendy NYC hotel is looking full of illegal migrants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9GHBPLCGW8
BUYING THE INVADERS CONDOS???
NY Mayor Eric Adams Wants $2 Billion to Care for Economic Migrants
Ordinary Americans should pay the $2 billion cost of housing and feeding the economic migrants that New York City leaders are putting into Americans’ jobs and apartments, according to Mayor Eric Adams.
“We expect more from our national leaders to address this in a real way,” Adams told a group of Venezuelan economic migrants during a brief Sunday trip to the border town of El Paso, Texas.
“Our price tag could be anywhere from $1.5 to $2 billion,” Adams told told a radio interviewer on January 13.
On Sunday, job seeking migrants cheered when Adams — a Democrat — told migrants he would fight to ensure that they “experience the American dream.”
In December 2022, a city report declared that one in seven New Yorkers already live in poverty: “Under the Official Poverty Measure (OPM), 13.9 percent of New Yorkers — or nearly 2.7 million people — lived in poverty in 2021, compared to 12.8 percent of all Americans. ‘
Yet Adams also complained about the cost of accepting the additional poor migrants that he is welcoming. “New York cannot take more — we can’t,” Adams told the press conference.
He added, “Our cities are being undermined — we don’t deserve this,” the New York Times reported on Sunday.
Adams’ $2 billion demand is twice his October demand for $1 billion, and it comes after President Joe Biden invited many more thousands of low-wage, apartment-sharing migrants to seek jobs in the United States. “We’re trying to make it easier for people to get here,” Biden declared in a January 10 summit meeting in Mexico.
Nearly all of the migrants are seeking work, partly because many have to repay loans and mortgages which they took out to fund their trek to Biden’s border welcome. Many also bring their children, hoping for free schooling in the schools needed by American kids.
However, New York City comptroller Brad Lander tweeted his support for labor migration in the city:
But the Mayor’s trip to Texas does little to deliver the $$ NYC needs to provide shelter & services. Instead, it risks reinforcing a harmful narrative that new immigrants themselves are a problem.
Far from “undermining” our city, immigrants have been the driving force for NYC’s success for centuries …
But he also said the city’s elite should help pay for the migration with higher taxes:
To be clear: We must also do more for low-income & working class New Yorkers. So in addition to rightly demanding more from DC & Albany, we’ve urged the mayor to raise revenues from the wealthiest NYers, to help struggling families afford the rising cost of housing & child care.
The New York Times reported on Adams’ visit to the border, but downplayed the local economic damage caused to Americans by the government’s welcome for low-wage migrant workers:
Mr. Adams has struggled to respond to the flood of migrants arriving on buses in New York City, constantly shifting his strategy and his rhetoric. The city has provided shelter, food, clothing and schooling to thousands of migrants and their children, and Mr. Adams has argued that migrants should be able to work legally in the city more quickly.
But the mayor has also struck a harsh tone at times, calling on Mr. Biden to slow the flow of migrants at the border and saying shortly after Christmas that there was “no more room at the inn” in New York for additional migrants. As the city faces growing budget challenges, Mr. Adams has said that the migrant crisis may require cuts to basic city services.
Overall, the Biden migrants being welcomed by Adams because they allow the city’s Democratic leaders to preserve their high/low economy.
The divided economy allows a small number of wealthy landlords and investors keep political power amid a fractured city of divided, diverse, distracted, and poor voters.
Between the 1940s and about 1990, the city’s wage gap was much smaller because tight curbs on international immigration from roughly 1925 to 1990. During those decades, nearly all newcomers to the city were outspoken, equality-minded Americans from nearby U.S. states, such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
If the supply of post-1990s imported labor was ended by Congress, the city’s investors otherwise would be forced to again offer middle-class wages to help recruit Americans from upstate New York cities, or from other states such as New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.
City leaders hide their post-1990s exploitation of migrants behind the 1950s “Nation of Immigrants” narrative. That elite-imposed narrative repurposes the Statue of Liberty from a celebration of Americans’ constitution into a “Golden Door” invite for foreign economic migrants.
Adams’ welcome for migrants also generates many customers for the city’s welfare, aid, housing, education, and medical agencies.
For example, the city is providing overnight shelters to more than 60,000 homeless people each night, and is adding at least 5,500 migrant children to the overcrowded and failing schools needed by the city’s non-wealthy American families. City employees provide a critical slice of votes to Democrats in the city’s elections.
THE REALITY is that illegals jump our open borders by invitation and they come
to loot. They go where the looting is best. CA? California hands illegals nearly $40
billion in social services on the state level and those figures regardless of CA's
deficits, only go up. The County of Los An
geles, on top of these numbers, hands illegals $1.5 billion YEARLY.
Here's how a trendy NYC hotel is looking full of illegal migrants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9GHBPLCGW8
WATCH ILLEGALS VOTE FOR KAMALA HARRIS!
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskillhas identified California Senator Kamala Harris as the party leader on issues of immigration and race. Harris wants a moratorium on construction of new immigration-detention facilities in favor of the old “catch and release” policy for illegal aliens, and has urged a shutdown of the government rather than compromise on mass amnesty.
Victor Davis Hanson: Biden is the most dangerously radical President in US history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdkca09EHRI&t=772s
"Kids are being raped by cartel members. Tons of drugs are flooding across the border that will kill Americans. Millions of illegal aliens are flooding across the border," the lawmaker tweeted Tuesday.
As reported by Breitbart Texas, the arrest of migrants with existing criminal records has risen more than 350 percent since 2020. According to CBP, the number of migrants who have criminal convictions for Homicide and Manslaughter rose from 3 encounters in 2020 to more than 60 in 2022. More than 120 migrants with homicide or manslaughter convictions have been encountered since January 2021 — compared to 11 during the Trump era. The increase reflects those convicted of prior offenses committed in the United States.
Five Migrant Sex Offenders Caught in Texas Border Sector in Two Weeks
EAGLE PASS, Texas — Despite a recent slowdown in migrant crossings in the Del Rio Sector, five convicted sex offenders were arrested trying to elude detection over a recent 14-day period.
During the last week of December, Border Patrol agents in Del Rio arrested Mario Alberto Garcia-Mejia, a Guatemalan national allegedly attempting to sneak through a highway immigration checkpoint. Interviewing agents discovered 28-year-old Garcia-Mejia had two previous felony convictions sexual abuse of a minor in 2021.
Just before New Year’s Day, agents in Brackettville arrested Klever Yunga Pando, a 43-year-old Ecuadorian with three other migrants walking through a private ranch. A check of the criminal database revealed Yunga-Pando to be a previously convicted sex offender. Yunga-Pando was convicted of sexual abuse with a person under 11 years old and acting in manner to injure a child under 17- years-old in New York in 2021.
During the first week of January, agents arrested an additional three migrants also previously convicted of sex offenses in the United States. On January 2, agents discovered six migrants aboard a northbound freight train in Spofford, Texas. Among the group was Juan Zertuche-Castillo. The 45-year-old from Mexico was discovered to have been convicted in 2003 of indecency with a child in San Antonio.
On January 5, agents in Eagle Pass arrested 27-year-old Daniel Barrientos-Salazar of Mexico. Agents soon discovered he had two felony convictions in Dallas for indecency with a child and failure to register as a sex offender.
On the same day, Brackettville agents arrested six migrants attempting to avoid detection on a ranch. Within the group was Ricardo Nino-Espinoza, a 43-year-old Mexican national. Agents discovered he had been previously convicted of sexual assault in 2011 in Austin, Texas.
The criminal penalties for convicted felons returning to the United States are significant. According to CBP, each of the migrants arrested during this period are amenable to a felony charge under Title 8 USC § 1326 – Re-entry after Deportation. If convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
IT'S OVER! THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS FINISHED OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS
But they have built the La Raza 'The Race' Mexican welfare state!
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