Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by User23 on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @02:55PM
(#38181938)
The answer is already in the submission.
The end result is the Federal Reserve would be forced to follow its unwritten 0th commandment: maintain the integrity of the payments system. As a consequence of that imperative it would be operationally forced to continue to ensure Treasury auctions and payments continued to go through. Presumably accounting gimmicks would be employed to avoid “technically” exceeding the debt ceiling, like simply allowing Treasury to overdraw. But at the end of the day there would be no constitutional crisis. At least not a forced one. Of course we shouldn’t underestimate the power of stupidity so it can’t be ruled out entirely.
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Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @04:42PM
(#38183285)
> it would be operationally forced to continue to ensure Treasury auctions and payments continued to go through
The Fed can't buy debt directly from the Treasury [1].
Re:I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Play...
by User23 on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:55PM
(#38184861)
Sure there’s the primary dealer figleaf/kickback. Operationally though the Fed is just buying government debt with an extra step.
Also the Fed can just let Treasury run negative balances or any other number of accounting tricks.