Free Republic

Data show that in the first 10 months of 2022, European countries have reduced their holdings of U.S. debt by a total of $126.34 billion, while Asia has reduced its holdings by a whopping $521.38 billion. China has sold a total of $171.2 billion in U.S. debt, while Japan has sold a total of $240 million in U.S. debt. As of November 2022, the largest holders of U.S. debt are still Japan and China. Among them, Japan holds $1.0822 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, selling $14.6 billion in August alone; China has reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries for three consecutive...

Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D) met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) Wednesday to urge the House Republican leader to negotiate with President Biden on legislation to raise the debt limit, a sign the senior West Virginia senator could play a pivotal role in bipartisan talks. Manchin’s meeting with McCarthy comes at a time when other Democrats, including Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, say that Democrats should not negotiate over the debt limit.

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy should lead the way on crafting a solution to the debt ceiling deadline so the United States can keep paying its bills. “I can’t imagine any debt ceiling provision passed out of the Senate with 60 votes could actually pass this particular House,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters, referring to the threshold to break a filibuster and pass a bill. “So I think the final solution to this particular episode lies between Speaker McCarthy and the president.” He said that a fix “will have to come out...

Dozens of House Democrats have proposed legislation that would eliminate the debt ceiling, which would allow the government to borrow without any limit set by Congress. The federal government hit the $31.381 trillion debt ceiling last week, and House Republicans are pushing for commitments to cut back on the record growth in federal spending before agreeing to allow more borrowing. But Democrats accuse Republicans of setting up the possibility of prohibiting a debt ceiling hike, which would make the government unable to fund all of its current obligations.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said on Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Joe Biden’s invitation to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to discuss the debt ceiling was a “good thing.” Partial transcript as follows: MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And that may take some time. I want to ask you about some of the business that Congress will have to get to soon. As you know, the White House wants a clean lift to the debt limit with no strings attached. Senator Manchin said it’s a mistake for the White House to refuse to negotiate with Republicans. Do you think...

Catherine Rampell of the WaPo is correctly recognizing that states are sabotaging their finances. While she recognizes the coming problem, she blames tax cuts instead of overspending and depending on the rich as the culprit. Democrats rarely think they spend too much and rarely want to allow the people and businesses to keep more of what they earn. As recession looms (maybe), states sabotage their own financesRampell, like most journalists, has falsely blamed Trump's tax rate cuts for cutting federal revenues when revenues actually rose substantially after the rate cuts. Overspending has always been the problem in DC.Many states sabotaged...

The United States on Thursday announced a huge $2.5 billion weapons package for Ukraine, including 90 Stryker combat vehicles, the first time Washington has committed the system to Kyiv. The new lethal assistance — announced a day ahead of a gathering of top Western military officials for the Ukraine Contact Group in Germany — includes hundreds of armored vehicles, thousands of artillery rounds and new Avenger air defense systems pulled from U.S. weapons stockpiles.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has signalled that she will “tap” into Social Security to avoid breaching the US debt limit. Of course, if she does, it is unlikely that she will return the dollars. The Credit Default Swaps 1-year for the US (insurance against default) sits at 68.55, near the highest since 2013 debt ceiling crisis. Notice that the debt ceiling keeps on climbing once the Kabuki Theater of Democrats and Republicans is over. The Volatility Cube for the US CDS 1 year signals that it will all be over soon. So, Yellen and Treasury are threatening us with...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday he is confident that the U.S. will never default on its debt and that he is not concerned a financial crisis could be on the horizon. McConnell told reporters in his home state that while the push to raise the debt ceiling is “always a rather contentious effort,” he believes lawmakers will succeed at doing so before the Treasury exhausts its “extraordinary measures” in June. “No, I would not be concerned about a financial crisis,” McConnell told a gaggle of reporters following an event at the University of Louisville to discuss disaster...

“I suspect that you will continue to hear coming from the United States additional packages of security assistance, additional weapons and capabilities for Ukraine – perhaps as soon as the end of this week,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN.Kirby didn’t elaborate on the contents of the package but said that the U.S. was concentrated “on trying to make sure that we are giving Ukraine what they need in the fight that they’re in.”“We’re gonna continue to modulate these packages so that they’re most appropriate for what Ukraine need

The Biden administration is preparing to announce a roughly $2.5 billion military aid package for Ukraine that is expected to include dozens of Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles, according to two people familiar with the decision, as the Pentagon intensifies its support ahead of an expected counteroffensive against entrenched Russian forces. The war has entered a phase, U.S. officials have said, that will require Ukrainian units to attack enemy forces in a concerted way, using tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aviation in what is known as combined arms warfare. Bradleys and Strykers would significantly bolster their firepower and allow soldiers...

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) rejected President Joe Biden’s demand that Congress increase the nation’s debt ceiling without attaching any conditions such as the spending cuts that virtually all congressional Republicans are demanding.In an informal news conference with reporters just outside the Capitol, McCarthy said “we’re six months away, approximately, and what I would like to do is sit down with all the leaders, especially the President, and start having the discussion.”The Speaker said Biden’s refusal to discuss anything other than a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling, which limits federal borrowing, is “a sign of arrogance that...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the deadline fast approaching to increase the amount of money that can be legally stolen from the American people, Congress is being urged to come together and raise the nation's theft ceiling without conditions. "We need to end the partisan bickering," said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. "The American people need us to reach across the aisle to steal more and more wealth from them and their future generations. If we don't do this quickly, Congressional pay might be suspended and national parks might close. In other words, we're all gonna die if we don't get this...

Those who know Wall Street lore sometimes recall that Fed chairman William Miller—Paul Volcker’s immediate predecessor—joked that most Americans believed the Federal Reserve was either an Indian reservation, a wildlife preserve, or a brand of whiskey. The Fed, of course, is none of those things, but there’s also one other thing the Federal Reserve is not: an actual bank. It is simply a government agency that does bank-like things.It’s easy to see why many people might think it is a bank. “Bank” is right there in the name of the twelve regional banks that make up the system: for example,...

Behind the refusal of the House Republican Party’s so-called freedom caucus to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is the caucus’s skepticism that he will actually “rein in government spending.” I’ve never quite understood why all Republicans do not belong to the Freedom Caucus. If the Republican Party supports low taxes, light regulations and strong national security, why is a Freedom Caucus even necessary? Here’s the problem. In 1900, government at all three levels — local, state and federal — taxed Americans at about 9% of their earnings. Now, it is over 32%. As former President Ronald Reagan said: “Government’s...

San Francisco’s reparations committee has proposed paying each Black longtime resident $5 million and granting total debt forgiveness due to the decades of "systematic repression" faced by the local Black community. The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which advises the city on developing a plan for reparations for Black residents, released its draft report last month to address reparations – not for slavery, since California was not technically a slave state, but "to address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery." "While...

On Friday’s edition of NBC’s “Now Tonight,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein argued that America’s government debt doesn’t weaken the country. Host Jake Ward asked, “For those of us at home, the idea of having debt sounds like a very, very bad thing. … What I want to ask you here is, is [Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)] right, does our debt as a nation make us weak?”

The White House on Friday called for the debt limit to be raised without conditions, laying down a marker ahead of what is likely to be a bruising fight with House Republicans in the coming months. “We believe, when it comes to the debt limit, it has been done in a bipartisan way over the years and decades. And it should be done in a bipartisan way. And it should be done without conditions. That is important here,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. Jean-Pierre’s comments came shortly after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to warn...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time. Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential,...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A federal agency will provide more than $2.3 million to two Kentucky organizations to support school safety and mental health, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said. Funding for the grants comes from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which McConnell — as the Senate’s top-ranking Republican — helped lead to Senate passage last year. McConnell said the funding will provide “much-needed mental health infrastructure in our schools.” “The American people do not have to choose between safer schools and the Constitution, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act proves it,” McConnell said. “This bill increases school safety, helps troubled...