What if the US is unable to sell treasuries?

Quote from ivanbaj:

Imagine you have the problem of managing $100,000,000,000. Where will you put them? In gold? Oil? Europe? Stocks?

US is the bank of choice. There are no other banks. Monopoly for years to come.

Imagine if there were but one bank in the state called Da Playa's Bank N' Bling Depo (combination financial institution and jewelry store). You walk up to the window that features ads for 2 week payday loans that also include a free pipe (they seem very small and cheap though). You're dropping 10mm so you meet the branch manager whose name is "Dime Bag". You evalute the banks and conclude that your 10 mil wouldn't last 10 minutes.

Do you open an account? It's the only bank around, and it has a monopoly.
 
Quote from fhl:

The title of the thread is 'what if US is unable to sell treasuries?'.

The answer is 'we'd be <i>royally screwed</i>'. And no amount of sugar coating is going to get around that.

Essentially, that's what happened to Argentina. After many years of politically-motivated deficit spending, ridiculous military expenditures, and a costly and insane war (sound familiar?) with Great Britain in the Faulkllands that put the final icing on the debt cake, no one would step forward to buy their bonds. Even the Argentinian people would not buy them, and they had no choice but to print money. I saw a PBS program last night that claimed that they printed so much money that for a brief period they ran out of paper to print it on! Inflation was running at 100%/month.
 
Quote from piezoe:

Essentially, that's what happened to Argentina. After many years of politically-motivated deficit spending, ridiculous military expenditures, and a costly and insane war (sound familiar?) with Great Britain in the Faulkllands that put the final icing on the debt cake, no one would step forward to buy their bonds. Even the Argentinian people would not buy them, and they had no choice but to print money. I saw a PBS program last night that claimed that they printed so much money that for a brief period they ran out of paper to print it on! Inflation was running at 100%/month.

http://www37.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=USA+vs+Argentina+GDP

http://www37.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=USA+vs+Argentina+debt
 
Quote from piezoe:

Essentially, that's what happened to Argentina. After many years of politically-motivated deficit spending, ridiculous military expenditures, and a costly and insane war (sound familiar?) with Great Britain in the Faulkllands that put the final icing on the debt cake, no one would step forward to buy their bonds. Even the Argentinian people would not buy them, and they had no choice but to print money. I saw a PBS program last night that claimed that they printed so much money that for a brief period they ran out of paper to print it on! Inflation was running at 100%/month.

Argentina's Economic Collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6_i8zuffs&feature=related


BTW: Argentina's minister of finance during the 80's leading up to the crash was called: "Grinspun".



:p
 
Quote from noob_trad3r:

Would the US govt come to a halt and have to issue IOUs like california instead of more dollarbills printed?

How would this effect the markets and the average joe
as the auctions just proved. the world wants our debt.
 
The US has sizable free room left to increase taxes on their citizens, compared to places like Canada, UK or EUR Zone. All this non-sense about the US defaulting on national debt is just that, at least for the next couple of years.
 
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