Daily Management Review

US Treasury Secretary Yellen Is Personally Calling CEOs To Warn Them About The US Debt Ceiling: Reports


05/09/2023




US Treasury Secretary Yellen Is Personally Calling CEOs To Warn Them About The US Debt Ceiling: Reports
According to reports quoting information from sources familiar with the situation, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is reaching out to US corporate and financial leaders to explain the "catastrophic" impact a US debt default would have on the US and worldwide economies.
 
According to one of the individuals, the Treasury Secretary is meeting with individual CEOs to warn them about the "dangerous consequences of the current brinkmanship."
 
The sources declined to name the CEOs with whom Yellen had recently met, or to disclose any other specifics about their meetings, but one said they included executives from the financial sector and the broader economy.
 
While the sources did not elaborate, Biden administration officials have been consulting with business owners about putting pressure on Republicans to lift the debt ceiling without conditions.
 
The Treasury Secretary postponed a scheduled travel to Japan for this week's Group of Seven finance ministers conference to appear on ABC News' 'This Week' on Sunday, when she warned that failing to increase the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling would result in a 'constitutional catastrophe'."Discussions on the problem should not take place "with a gun to the head of the American people," Yellen said, referring to Republican lawmakers' insistence on attaching a rise in the debt ceiling to significant spending cutbacks that Democrats oppose.
 
Yellen will now travel to Japan this week and deliver a press conference in Niigata, Japan, before the G7 meeting on Thursday.
 
President Joe Biden maintains that Congress has a constitutional obligation to raise the debt ceiling, which represents already spent public funds, without conditions.
 
Yellen told legislators last week that without a rise in the federal debt limit, Treasury will likely be unable to pay all of the government's debts as early as June 1.
 
Yellen and other economists and analysts have frequently warned that a default on US debt would result in millions of job losses, as well as higher mortgage, auto loan, and credit card payments.
 
Unlike most other industrialised countries, the United States has a fixed limit on the amount of money it can borrow. Because the government spends more than it receives, policymakers must raise the debt ceiling on a regular basis.
 
(Source:www.usnews.com)