Video of U.S. Treasury Auctions - $13.4 Trillion And Counting
Sequitur
Posts: 1,195
Slightly off-topic, but since we have lots of posts and pictures concerning precious metals and storage, here’s the flipside of hard assets: fiat electronic money. If you'd like to see video of the actual room where U.S. Treasury auctions happen every day, watch the first ten minutes of this Frontline special: Ten Trillion And Counting.
This is, in fact, one of the trading desks at the Bureau of the Public Debt. Pretty interesting how this looks like any other trading desk at a fund or bank proprietary trading desk. At trading desks just like this, you'll find the carnage of past failures such as LTCM, Amaranth, Lehman -- or all of Iceland's banks.
If you are looking for a moment when the house of cards crashes, it may occur at the Public Debt Bureau. Sustained debt auction failures at this desk will precipitate either U.S. default, or serious dollar inflation, as the Fed electronically prints trillions of dollars to buy U.S. debt instruments no one else will buy, and/or as other governements flood the market with their dollar holdings. Failed Treasury debt auctions means the U.S. has no money to fund operations, period. The dollar will be severely tested if this comes to pass.
Something else to consider. When Frontline aired this special, the U.S. had booked debt of around $10 trillion. A staggering number, yes, but look where we are now:
Look at those receipts versus outlays, as well as gold holdings in the last line. A stunning amount of red ink that is ramping up exponentially. Stunning.
And it’s worse: these gigantic debt figures do not include the GSEs, Fannie and Freddie, which account for perhaps $3 to $4 trillion more in toxic paper (the bad mortgage loans Bernake stupidly bought from the banks at par). Very troubling how the GSE debt is kept off the United States’s books, when the whole world knows the Fed is backstopped by Treasury. Pure book-cooking.
The U.S. debt numbers are truly gargantuan, and it is set to increase trillions more in 2011, 2012, and 2013. I do not see how the United States can ever – ever – pay back this debt, let alone service the interest on this red-ink tsunami.
This is, in fact, one of the trading desks at the Bureau of the Public Debt. Pretty interesting how this looks like any other trading desk at a fund or bank proprietary trading desk. At trading desks just like this, you'll find the carnage of past failures such as LTCM, Amaranth, Lehman -- or all of Iceland's banks.
If you are looking for a moment when the house of cards crashes, it may occur at the Public Debt Bureau. Sustained debt auction failures at this desk will precipitate either U.S. default, or serious dollar inflation, as the Fed electronically prints trillions of dollars to buy U.S. debt instruments no one else will buy, and/or as other governements flood the market with their dollar holdings. Failed Treasury debt auctions means the U.S. has no money to fund operations, period. The dollar will be severely tested if this comes to pass.
Something else to consider. When Frontline aired this special, the U.S. had booked debt of around $10 trillion. A staggering number, yes, but look where we are now:
Look at those receipts versus outlays, as well as gold holdings in the last line. A stunning amount of red ink that is ramping up exponentially. Stunning.
And it’s worse: these gigantic debt figures do not include the GSEs, Fannie and Freddie, which account for perhaps $3 to $4 trillion more in toxic paper (the bad mortgage loans Bernake stupidly bought from the banks at par). Very troubling how the GSE debt is kept off the United States’s books, when the whole world knows the Fed is backstopped by Treasury. Pure book-cooking.
The U.S. debt numbers are truly gargantuan, and it is set to increase trillions more in 2011, 2012, and 2013. I do not see how the United States can ever – ever – pay back this debt, let alone service the interest on this red-ink tsunami.
Realtime National Debt Clock:
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Fed buys 900 million in Treasuries
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