Picture this, you are broke, I know for some of us this doesn't require a terribly grand stretch of the imagination, but go with me on this, you are broke, but you want to keep living the way you are living.
You know what, back up a moment, you aren't just broke, you are really broke. You also have several credit cards that are maxed out. So, what do you do when the cable bill arrives in the mail? How about just crumble it up and toss it over your shoulder? What about at the grocery store? Let's say you just fill up your cart with all sorts of goodies and Cheerios and just walk right out of the store, patting yourself on the back because of all the time you saved by not having to wait in line.
If you just ignore the bills that are piling up around you, you could just make a (terribly false) claim that you are not in any more debt then you where the moment before you opened that first neglected bill. In real life the cable company probably won't turn off your HBO subscription the first day after the bill was due, and that appears to be just the case with the Federal Government.
According to the Daily Treasury Statements for the past 70 plus days, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00. Just $25 million and some change below the legal limit.
Even though the government's official accounting of the debt has not budged since May 17th of this year, the Treasury has continued to sell bills, notes and bonds at a value that exceeds the value of the bills, notes and bonds it was redeeming.
In fact, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for May 17, the Treasury had by then already redeemed approximately $4,776,995,000,000.00 since the beginning of the fiscal year (which started on Oct. 1, 2012). As of that same day, the Treasury had already sold $5,354,508,000.000.00 new bills, notes and bonds during the fiscal year. That represented a net increase in publicly circulating U.S. government debt instruments of $577,513,000,000.00 for the fiscal year. This was the same day that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (look at the signature on your recently issued dollar bill) sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. In the letter, Lew said the Treasury would begin implementing what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” that allows the Treasury to continue to borrow and spend money even after it has hit the legal debt limit.
Even though the government's official accounting of the debt has not budged since May 17th of this year, the Treasury has continued to sell bills, notes and bonds at a value that exceeds the value of the bills, notes and bonds it was redeeming.
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| Jack Lew's Signature, or exhibit A of his plausible deniability? |
A "standard set of extraordinary measures." Seems to me that on top of a clue, a budget, and some balls, Washington may want to look into getting a dictionary. The real question this all raises, how long before all this magic money shuffling catches up to us? Will it be the electric bill? The water bill? Your Social Security check? Your medicare payment? When a person lies about how much money he's secretly spending fueling a gambling or junk food habit, he's called an addict. What is it called when the government has to hide the fact that it's spending money just leaving the lights on?
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