Something is happening to that 12.1 trillion debt cap, and it is very non-obvious
September 28, 2009
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Up till now, the general consensus was that we'd hit the 12.1 trillion limit in mid-October. That was the common view in July and the media kept repeating it as early as this September: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26996.html Indeed, the debt has been rising steadily for the most part of this year. However, about 1.5 months ago something started to change. It's been a month now that this debt clock http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ is showing virtually unchanged levels of debts, standing at about 11.8 trillion. About once a week the clock shows a small increase, then the numbers begin to get smaller, and before the week is over, the debt returns to its original level. Moreover, for the past couple of weeks, I believe the clock showed an overall DECLINE. Anyway, with only 3 weeks to go before the mid-October deadline, it is highly unlikely that we can go from 11.8 trillion to 12.1 trillion at that rate. So some 300 billion dollars of projected debt got lost somewhere, and I can't see how this little miracle could happen. Banks returning TARP money would be one obvious candidate, but there is no way they could return 300 billion. No budget cuts have been announced, and I don't see the tax revenue beating projections by this amount. Even if they monetized this debt, it would be a radical revision of the approved budget parameters (even if a pleasant kind of change as far as Geitner is concerned), so there is no way it could go unreported. Something strange is going on... Some stealthy monetization program bypassing the common accounting procedures?
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