US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Friday afternoon said her agency would need to start taking “extraordinary measures” or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling as early as Jan. 14.
“Treasury expects to hit the statutory debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23,” Yellen wrote in a letter addressed to US House and Senate leadership, at which point extraordinary measures would be used to prevent the government from breaching the nation’s debt ceiling — which has been suspended until Wednesday.
The department has in the past deployed what are known as “extraordinary measures” or accounting maneuvers to keep the government operating. However, once those measures run out, the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the US government’s ability to borrow.
Photo: Reuters
“I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said.
The news comes after US President Joe Biden signed a bill into law last week that averted a government shutdown, but did not include US president-elect Donald Trump’s demand to raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit. The bill was approved by Congress only after fierce internal debate among Republicans over how to handle Trump’s demand.
“Anything else is a betrayal of our country,” Trump said in a statement.
After a protracted debate in the summer of last year over how to fund the government, policymakers crafted the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which included suspending the nation’s US$31.4 trillion borrowing authority until Jan. 1, 2025.
The US federal debt stands at roughly US$36 trillion — which ballooned across Republican and Democratic administrations. The spike in inflation after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed up government borrowing costs such that debt service next year would exceed spending on national security.
Republicans, who would have full control of the White House, House and Senate in the new year, have big plans to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and other priorities, but debate over how to pay for them.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of US Affordable Care Act enrollees expired on Jan.1, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day US government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their political aspirations this year. US President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A US House of Representatives vote
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
RSS