Can you give me some documentation on that? Thanks.
Can you give me some documentation on that? Thanks.
It depends on one's definition of "default".Fearing (Another) U.S. Debt Default
US Has Defaulted Before
Thursday, July 28th, 2011 by George Bragues posted in Economics, History, Politics.
The idea that the US cannot possibly default, at least in the sense of not being able to pay its debt obligations, is universally held. It helps explain why yields on US government bonds are so low despite its public debt having reached an eye-popping 96% of GDP. But is it true that the US cannot really default?
According to Richard Salsman, president of InterMarket Forecasting, it’s not. One key reason why not is America’s track record. The US has effectively defaulted before. The operative word here is “effectively”, as the US has never formally declared that it was defaulting on its debt. But if a country’s government takes steps to dramatically reduce the value of its currency and then use this cheapened money to pay the nominal amounts it owes, it has ”effectively” defaulted. Creditors end up with less purchasing power than they originally lent.
As excerpted in the op-ed page of today’s Financial Post, such inflationary restructuring of debt has occurred at least three times in US history:
1. The 1861-1865 Civil War during which greenbacks were issued.
2. In 1933, when the Roosevelt administration passed an executive order that revoked clauses in bond contracts allowing creditors to demand payment in gold.
3. The coup de grace that US President Nixon gave to Bretton Woods when he broke the last tie between the US dollar and gold. This allowed the US government to freely print money. The consequence, as Salsman points out, is that the rate of return on US bonds was -56% from 1965 to 1981.
That negative performance is something to think about if one happens to be pondering an investment in US government bonds.
Here is a brief history of the matter (yes it is from a blog, I did an internet search, but feel free to do your own research, if you wish to become more educated on the matter, it has been discussed on several threads here on FR back when the debt ceiling issue was in the news).
http://expectedloss.blogspot.com/2011/07/correction-us-has-defaulted-before-and.html