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.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS