It is high time to get some US breaking news. As usual, all things are greatly exaggerated, like a coming economic catastrophe, a country facing collapse due to the US debt ceiling. For more than 50 years, the Russian mass media has consistently published the same information several times a year.
This fall was no exception. Top news is coming with the following headlines: "Yellen warns Congress of unthinkable US default risk without debt limit hike", "US debt default would trigger historic financial crisis" and "Treasury Dept to invoke extraordinary measures as Congress misses debt-ceiling deadline". The extraordinary measures have been highlighted. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is sounding the alarm. She urged the Congress to raise the debt ceiling by October to avoid a default on the government’s bills.
According to Yellen, a potential default may trigger a historic financial crisis and compound the damage from the COVID-19 pandemic. The US economy is likely to plunge into recession, and the United States will become a permanently weaker country. "Neither delay nor default is tolerable", the Treasury Secretary stated. She added that lawmakers must act immediately.
Nowadays, the countries with the largest holdings of US government bonds are Japan ($1.2773 trillion), China ($1.619 trillion) and Britain ($452.9 billion). Russia is not in the top 30 holders of
Treasury bills. Moscow finds it appropriate to increase its investments in US bonds. For example, in June Russia bought Treasury bills worth $200 million. The total investment in the US government bonds now equals $4.006 billion, out of these, $305 million are long-term and $3.701 billion are short-term investments.
