Episode 34 - Treasury Rates, China's Accelerating Debt Problem, Trump is Innocent

The Exit Strategy Podcast

The debt ceiling, the subject of the current drama consuming the nation’s capital, is something else entirely. While legally separate from the budget process, it represents yet another check that has evolved into the system since a version of the debt ceiling was first adopted in the run-up to World War I. The Treasury Department has been given gradually more leeway by Congress over how to finance deficit spending, be it for wars, emergencies or the creation of the social safety net. As negotiations over addressing the US debt ceiling continue and the threat of default draws closer, President Joe Biden has resurfaced the controversial idea of using the 14th Amendment as a way to lift the borrowing cap without Congress. Biden has said he doesn’t consider the move an imminent solution, but several liberal lawmakers in both chambers are pushing him to invoke the amendment rather than give in to Republican demands to cut spending and tighten work requirements, among others. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are among 11 senators who are urging the president to take advantage of the amendment to avoid the US defaulting on its debt.

China’s $23 Trillion Local Debt Mess Is About to Get Worse. Stanford University political science professor Jean Oi, who specializes in China’s fiscal reforms, said: “The local government debt problem is spread throughout the country. While rich coastal areas will have more opportunities to repay their debt and more resources to draw on, less-developed places in China are going to be much more limited in what they can do.

Durham report shows it was Clinton, not Trump, who colluded with Russians. Durham’s 300-plus page report also states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” to launch the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The report also concludes that “at least on the part of certain personnel intimately involved in the matter” there was “a predisposition to open an investigation into Trump.”

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