Government Faces Foreclosure

Who would have guessed that you can't borrow and spend without producing anything and then run into financial trouble?

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: November 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter. The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.” WILLIAM H. GROSS

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The Debt Buildup

Payback Time

The Debt Bomb

Articles in this series will examine the consequences of, and attempts to deal with, growing public and private debts.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

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Now about that $1.5 trillion health care program....