Open Thread

March 26th, 2009 11:20 AM

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Debt bomb rocks Wall Street.

Wall Street got rocked Tuesday by a “debt bomb” economists have worried about for decades. Hours after the United Kingdom failed to attract enough buyers for its auction of $2.5 billion of 40-year bonds, the United States Treasury had similar difficulties with its sale of $34 billion worth of five-year notes and was forced to raise their interest rate to a much higher yield than had been anticipated. Such problematic debt offerings came on the heels of Germany having two failed auctions of its bonds already this year.

With the explosion in our debt, is it inevitable that there will come a day when our Treasury auctions off notes or bills and there aren't enough buyers? What happens then?