這一可能給國際金融市場造成巨大影響的美國政府債務違約問題，在財政部設定的17日這一最後關頭得以避免。參議院的表決結果為81票贊成，18票反對，半數以上共和黨議員投了贊成票。
參眾兩院通過的法案的核心之一是，允許美國政府在明年2月7日之前繼續發行國債，從而在事實上提高了債務上限。同一日以後，將批准財政部籌措資金的特別措施，最終可能將債務上限提高期限推遲至明年3月前後。
另一個核心內容是，批准解除自10月1日以來的政府機構關閉所需的預算。將依據2013會計年度（2012年10月～2013年9月）支出水平，制訂截至 明年1月15日的臨時預算。約40萬名聯邦政府僱員將重返工作崗位，以全美各地國立公園為代表，所有政府機構將時隔17天后恢復正常。
此外，兩黨已經決定在債務上限得到提高和政府機構恢復正常後，將建立就養老金等社會保障制度調整與稅制根本性改革等中長期財政重建計劃展開磋商的跨黨派協調機構。將在12月13日之前得出結論，並反映到明年1月15日以後保持政府機構繼續運行的預算中。
（中山真 華盛頓報導）
Treasury Paying $120 Billion in Bills Doubted as Fitch Warns
Investors holding $120 billion of Treasury bills coming due tomorrow are increasingly worried that they won’t get paid.
Rates on the bills, maturing the same day that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said the U.S. will exhaust its borrowing capacity, rose as high as 0.37 percent yesterday before dropping to 0.13 percent today, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The securities, issued a year earlier, traded at a rate of negative 0.01 percent as recently as Sept. 26.“That is how fear manifests itself,” said Marc Fovinci, head of fixed income at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management Inc. in Portland, Oregon, who helps invest $3.5 billion and holds about $500,000 of Oct. 31 bills in one account. “The market is discounting a day, or several days delay in payments.”
Lew told Congress last week the extraordinary measures being used to avoid breaching the debt ceiling “will be exhausted no later than Oct. 17” and the department will have about $30 billion to pay obligations if Congress fails to reach an agreement to lift the cap. Fitch Ratings placed the U.S.’s AAA credit rating on a negative watch yesterday, citing the government’s failure to raise its borrowing limit as the deadline approaches.
‘Last Gallon’
The Treasury should have enough money to pay off the Oct. 17 bills, according to Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Credit Suisse Group AG, one of the 21 primary dealer obligated to bid at Treasury auctions. The U.S. raised $13 billion in “new cash” through yesterday’s sale of $65 billion in three- and six-month bills, which should leave the government with about $40 billion once the Oct. 17 bills mature, he said.“After that the government is running on its last gallon of financial gas,” Jersey wrote in an e-mail. “After Oct. 24, the government will be running on fumes.”
The next securities maturing after the Oct. 17 debt are $93 billion of bills due Oct. 24. Rates on those bills rose 21 basis points to 0.68 percent today, the highest since they were sold in April. The rate was negative as recently as Sept. 27.
‘Close Enough’
“We are close enough to the deadline that, even if the latest headlines suggest the talks are progressing, there will be those risk-averse investors who decide they don’t want to hold those bills,” said John Davies, a U.S. interest-rate strategist at Standard Chartered Plc in London. “For many Treasury bill holders, a delayed payment can cause major problems and that means you have to shift your positioning, which creates selling pressure.”The Treasury is scheduled to sell $68 billion in bills today, including $20 billion of four-week securities, $22 billion in one-year debt and $26 billion in 189-day cash management bills.
The sizes of the four-week and 27-week bills indicates the Treasury has “slightly more room left under the debt limit” than previously estimated, according to Wrightson ICAP LLC, an economic advisory company specializing in government finance.
“There is very little chance that the Treasury will have any trouble rolling over the Oct. 24 bills even if - as seems quite possible -- the debt ceiling dispute drags into next week,” according to a commentary on the Jersey City, New Jersey-based company’s website yesterday.
Yesterday’s Auctions
The three-month bills sold yesterday drew a bid-to-cover ratio of 3.13, below the 4.52 average over the past 10 auctions. The high rate of 0.13 percent was the most since February 2011. The bid-to-cover ratio at the six-month bill auction was 3.52 versus an average of 5.07 at the previous 10 sales. It drew a rate of 0.15 percent, the highest since November 2012.This was the second-consecutive week bill that auctions attracted lower-than-average demand amid the budget wrangling in Washington.
“The bill auctions were very poor,” said Thomas Simons, a government-debt economist in New York at primary dealer Jefferies LLC. “Unless there is some type of agreement in Washington, the bill market will continue to trade choppily and auctions will not go well.”
Senate leaders resumed talks aimed at avoiding a default and ending the government shutdown after the Republican-controlled House scrapped a vote on its plan.
Initial Conditions
Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, had suspended their talks earlier while the House was considering its own bill. The House proposal contained almost none of Republicans’ initial conditions for ending the shutdown and raising the debt ceiling.The emerging Senate agreement would fund the government through Jan. 15, 2014, and suspend the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, 2014. The Treasury Department could use its extraordinary measures to delay default for about another month beyond that, said a Senate Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plan.
“Although Fitch continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon, the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default,” Fitch analysts Ed Parker, Tony Stringer and Douglas Renwick wrote in a report published yesterday. Fitch said it expects to resolve its rating watch negative outlook on the U.S. by the first quarter of 2014.
“The announcement reflects the urgency with which Congress should act to remove the threat of default hanging over the economy,” Brandi Hoffine, a Treasury spokeswoman, said in an e-mail yesterday referring to the Fitch statement.
Moody’s View
Moody’s Investors Service, which rates the U.S. a stable Aaa grade, reiterated that it expects the debt ceiling to be raised, averting a default. The company also anticipates “that the U.S. government will pay interest and principal on its debt even if the statutory debt limit isn’t raised.”Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its top credit grade on Aug. 5, 2011, citing Washington gridlock and the lack of an agreement on a way to contain its increasing ratio of debt to gross domestic product. The ratio of public debt to GDP is projected to decline to 74.6 percent in 2015 after peaking next year at 76.2 percent, according to a Congressional Budget Office forecast in May.
“We do think what’s going on right now validates our decision to lower the rating one notch,” John Chambers, a managing director of sovereign ratings at S&P, said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance.” “We think there will be an 11th hour deal, and that is our working assumption.”
Record Low
While the S&P downgrade didn’t result in investors charging the U.S. more to borrow, as 10-year yields fell to a record 1.38 percent in July 2012, the move contributed to a global stock-market rout that erased about $6 trillion in value from July 26 to Aug. 12, 2011.Citigroup Inc. is bracing for a possible U.S. default by avoiding some short-term Treasury investments amid what Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat called “a dangerous flirtation with the debt ceiling.”
Corbat made the remark during a conference call yesterday to discuss third-quarter results at New York-based Citigroup. The bank doesn’t own Treasuries that mature in October and holds few with terms ending before Nov. 16, Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said.
Although rates on bills have risen, they are lower than historical levels. One-month rates have averaged 1.5 percent in the past 10 years. During that time they touched a high of 5.26 percent in November 2006 and dropped to a low of negative 0.09 percent in December 2008.
Spending Cuts
Two years ago, one-month rates climbed to a 29-month high of 0.18 percent as the Aug. 2, 2011, deadline set by Treasury to avoid a default approached. They traded at negative 0.046 percent in December 2012 before a year-end trigger that forced automatic spending cuts and tax increases.The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based nonprofit research group, estimates that the Treasury will actually be unable to pay all the government’s bills on time at some point between Oct. 22 and Nov. 1. While the Treasury will probably be able to delay the true drop-dead date for a few days, it is unlikely to be able to do so beyond Nov. 1 because several large payments are due before then, the center says.
“There’s just a general interest in the market to be out of any paper in the market that could potentially be impacted by the debt ceiling in any way,” said Andrew Hollenhorst, fixed-income strategist at Citigroup in New York. “That’s just general concern around the debt ceiling and concern around something the market doesn’t feel it completely understands.”
Senate Leaders Resume Fiscal Talks as House Scraps Vote
U.S. Senate leaders are rushing to lock up an agreement to end the fiscal impasse, stepping in after House Republicans’ last-minute plan to avert a U.S. government default collapsed.The emerging Senate accord may be announced as early as this morning, though passage in the Republican-led House is far from assured and one ratings company yesterday placed the U.S.’s AAA credit rating on a negative watch. House leaders have made no decision about whether to vote on the Senate bill, according to a House Republican aide speaking on condition of anonymity.
The framework being negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell presents the clearest path to ending the 16-day-old government shutdown and extending U.S. borrowing authority, which lapses tomorrow. It would fund the government through Jan. 15, 2014, and suspend the debt limit until Feb. 7.
“Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have re-engaged in negotiations and are optimistic that an agreement is within reach,” Adam Jentleson, Reid’s spokesman, said in a statement last night. Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, today said the leaders are “still working” on a deal.
In the Senate, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, who has led a campaign against President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law, has left open the possibility of delaying the debt-ceiling measure. If any of the 100 senators chooses to delay it, a vote could be pushed to as late as next week, raising the prospect of a missed payment on the debt.
Boehner Decision
In the House, Representative John Boehner of Ohio is facing one of the most important decisions of his tenure as speaker: whether to allow a Senate agreement to come to the House floor unimpeded, or try to amend it. House Democrats say they could pass a Senate deal with a handful of Republicans, if Boehner would allow a vote.Rob Nabors, deputy White House chief of staff, was at the Capitol last night for meetings, according to an administration official who requested anonymity to discuss private talks.
A Senate accord on government funding and the debt ceiling will probably be presented for a House vote by Boehner and likely win passage with a majority of Democrats and minority of Republicans, Representative Charles Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, said last night in an interview on CNN.
Employee Furloughs
Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, temporarily suspended talks yesterday while Boehner tried and failed to marshal House Republicans behind a plan that was significantly scaled-down from demands for health-law changes that led to the U.S. government shutdown on Oct. 1.The partial shutdown has closed national parks, slowed clinical drug trials and led to the furlough of thousands of federal workers.
Fitch Ratings yesterday put the U.S. AAA credit grade on ratings watch negative, citing the government’s inability to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner, according to a statement after markets in New York closed.
U.S. one-month bill rates rose to the highest level since 2008 as investors prepared to bid for $68 billion of short-term debt today after three- and six-month auctions yesterday drew the weakest demand in four years.
Rates on bills maturing on Oct. 24 climbed to the highest since they were issued in April on concern the Treasury Department will have to delay repaying some of its maturing securities as lawmakers battle over raising the federal borrowing limit. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, one-month rates were 0.40 percent at 8:52 a.m. in New York, the highest since October 2008. The benchmark 10-year yield was little changed at 2.73 percent, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader data.
Futures Contracts
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures expiring in December rose 0.5 percent to 1,701.20 at 8:31 a.m. in New York. The benchmark gauge slid 0.7 percent yesterday after rallying 3.3 percent over the previous four days. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 65 points, or 0.6 percent, to 15,181.“If the market truly believed the U.S. will default on its obligations, we would see a more dramatic reaction from equity and bond markets,” Henk Potts, who helps oversee about $310 billion as a strategist at Barclays Wealth & Investment Management in London, said by phone today. “The great expectation is the deal will be done. If the deal is not done, however minuscule that chance that may be, it would have a devastating impact on sentiment.”
Recession Risk
Interviewed today on “CBS This Morning,” John Chambers, a managing director of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor’s, said he estimated that every week of the shutdown would cut 0.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product from the fourth-quarter output.“If we go past the point where the government can’t borrow any more, one of two things could happen,” he said -- cutting spending other than debt service, which “would certainly put the U.S. economy in a recession,” or not paying interest or debt service, “which would probably be an event that would be much worse” than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Under the Senate agreement, House Republicans would get almost none of their priorities. They tried to defund or delay the health-care law, settling last month on trying to delay the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance.
Obama Stand
Obama has described those requests as unacceptable ransom demands and insisted that Republicans relent.Republicans persisted after the partial government shutdown started Oct. 1 and saw their approval ratings drop in polls. Hardliners resisted plans that didn’t make major changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Others, such as Representative Peter King of New York, stuck with Boehner while complaining about the strategy.
“And the long teachable moment ends: stove is hot,” Representative Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, said on Twitter last night after Boehner scrapped the latest plan.
The emerging Senate agreement trades the pressing and already-missed deadlines for new ones over the next four months. The Treasury Department would be allowed to use so-called extraordinary measures to delay default for about another month beyond Feb. 7, said a Senate Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plan.
Income Verification
The Senate agreement may include a Republican-backed provision to tighten income verification requirements for people receiving health-insurance subsidies. That provision is linked to a proposal backed by Democrats and labor unions that would delay a reinsurance fee on group health plans.Both of those health-care provisions will either be in the agreement or be out of the agreement.
Senate passage of a bill could be delayed into late next week if a single senator objects, the aide said. Then that bill would have to go to the House. Procedurally, the Senate would have been able to act by Oct. 18 if the House had passed a bill last night.
Cruz, who led a Republican bid to defund Obamacare, spoke for more than 21 hours in a budget debate last month. On Oct. 14, he wouldn’t rule out stalling maneuvers, saying he wants to see the plan’s details. He made no public comments yesterday.
Unless Congress acts, the U.S. will be operating only on about $30 billion of cash reserves and incoming revenue starting tomorrow. It will begin missing promised payments between Oct. 22 and Oct. 31, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Votes Lacking
Boehner has tried several times over the past month to construct a debt-limit bill that House Republicans could support, and he hasn’t brought any proposals to a vote. Republicans didn’t have enough votes for the measure yesterday, said a leadership aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss vote counting.“We’re going to be prepared tomorrow to make some decisions,” Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, told reporters in the Capitol last night.
Unlike previous stopgap spending measures, the House bill wouldn’t have made big changes to the 2010 health-care law, and it contains no cuts to entitlement programs that Republicans sought to add to a debt-limit increase or spending bill.
‘Enough Already’
House Republicans have a 232-200 majority and would have needed all but 15 members to support a plan. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the proposal is a path to default and urged Boehner to support a bipartisan agreement emerging in the Senate.“We’re at the 11th hour here,” said Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. “The train to avoid default was smoothly heading down the tracks and picking up speed, and all of a sudden at the last minute, Speaker Boehner decides to throw a log on those tracks. Enough already.”
The House plan would have kept the government open through Dec. 15 and suspended the debt limit until Feb. 7, 2014. It would have prevented the government from making an employer contribution toward the health insurance premiums of members of Congress and their staffs, the president, the vice president and high-ranking administration officials -- all of whom would be required to purchase insurance on the state exchanges being set up under the law.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is close to Boehner and spoke to him earlier yesterday, said he was concerned that the speaker could become a “victim” of a failed Republican strategy to use a government shutdown as leverage to try to force changes to the health-care law.
Graham also said he is “getting to the point of disgust” with Democrats, including Reid, for refusing to help Republicans extricate themselves from an impossible negotiating position.
“Instead of trying to help us find a way out of a bad spot -- we won’t be the last political party to overplay our hand, it may happen one day on the Democratic watch,” he said. “And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kind of give a little?” Graham said, adding that Republicans went “too far” and “screwed up.”
美參院領袖達成提高債務及重開政府協定
10月16日，在美國首都華盛頓國會山，共和黨參議員特德克魯茲回答記者提問。新華社記者張軍攝。
據英國廣播公司消息，美國參議院兩黨領袖週三（16日）宣佈，已就提升債務上限及重開聯邦政府達成協議，可望同日通過方案。參議院民主黨領袖里德透露，協定內容包括通過臨時撥款，允許聯邦政府重開直至明年1月15日，並維持美國借貸能力直至明年2月7日。里德表示，這項妥協方案將維持美國經濟迫切需要的穩定。
白宮發言人表示，奧巴馬總統對這項協議表示歡迎，並敦促國會迅速表決通過這項法案。
共和黨領袖麥康奈爾表示兩黨達成協議，相信美國國會眾議院將儘快表決參議院協議。眾院的共和黨議員也暗示，將通過這項協議，可望趕在17日的期限前送交總統奧巴馬簽署成為法律，避免政府債務違約。
曾經因反對奧巴馬醫療保健改革以持續發言21小時阻撓議事進行的共和黨參議員克魯茲已經承諾不會阻撓參議院表決投票。
有跡象顯示這項協定可望很快在參議院進行表決，由共和黨主導的眾議院，將是關注焦點。
為了避免美國聯邦債務違約，美國參議院連夜進行談判，希望能儘快達成提高美國舉債上限的協定。美國國會必須在星期四（10月17日）之前，將美國國債限額由目前的16.7萬億美元上調，否則美國將面臨債務違約問題。
美國這場危機已經導致國際評級機構惠譽將美國信用等級列入負面觀察名單。
不過即使參議院通過這項折中方案，也不能保證由共和黨控制的眾議院會在週四最後期限以前通過該方案。
此前，眾議院共和黨團連續提出兩個折中方案，但不是無法被參議院民主黨和奧巴馬接受，就是無法為共和黨內部的保守派茶党接受。
