專欄美國經濟

Extremes of politics pose the real default risk

What is the probability of the American government tipping into technical default on August 2, because politicians fail to agree a deal to raise the ceiling on debt issuance? That is the $14,290bn question, following Moody’s decision on Wednesday to put its top-notch Aaa rating on the US on notice for a downgrade.

The answers vary wildly. If you look at online predictions markets – the arena for placing cyber bets – traders currently think there is a 60 per cent chance that no deal will be cut by the end of July. Most Wall Street banks, however, put it far lower. Bank of New York Mellon, for example, reckons the chance of a crisis on August 2 to be a “tail” risk of about 10 per cent. Meanwhile, movements in the Treasuries market imply that the danger of default is negligible: on Thursday the 10-year bond was trading with a yield of about 2.92 per cent, just above this year’s lows.

But if you spend any time listening to Washington politicians, it seems that the risks are significant – and rising. This week I talked to members of Congress from both parties, and to me it seems that positions are hardening in a way that could make it tough to cut any deal. Hence Moody’s move; it now thinks default risk is “low but no longer de minimus”.

您已閱讀26%(1250字),剩餘74%(3545字)包含更多重要資訊,訂閱以繼續探索完整內容,並享受更多專屬服務。
版權聲明:本文版權歸FT中文網所有,未經允許任何單位或個人不得轉載,複製或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵權必究。

吉蓮•邰蒂

吉蓮•邰蒂(Gillian Tett)擔任英國《金融時報》的助理主編,負責全球金融市場的報導。2009年3月,她榮獲英國出版業年度記者。她1993年加入FT,曾經被派往前蘇聯和歐洲地區工作。1997年,她擔任FT東京分社社長。2003年,她回到倫敦,成爲Lex專欄的副主編。邰蒂在劍橋大學獲得社會人文學博士學位。她會講法語、俄語、日語和波斯語。

相關文章

相關話題

設置字型大小×
最小
較小
默認
較大
最大
分享×