What’s going on?
As MoneyWeek went to press, the US federal government and Republicans in Congress remained locked in a stand-off over America’s self-imposed “debt ceiling” – the government’s borrowing limit (currently $31.4trn). The government actually hit the cap in January. Since then it has been using “extraordinary measures” to get round it (essentially fiscal accounting tools that curb certain government investments so that the bills continue to be paid). But now those measures have been exhausted and the point is close at which the US runs out of cash and can no longer issue new debt and pay
