The Most Well-Known Fact About U.S. Debt Is Wrong

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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/the-most-well-known-fact-about-us-debt-is-wrong/280272/



As the U.S. debt ceiling looms as the next crisis on the horizon, you’re going to hear it a lot of this.

“The government has never defaulted on its obligations…”

-The Associated Press

“The nation has never defaulted.”

-USA Today

“We’ve never defaulted in our history.”

-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

“It is not acceptable for one faction of one party in one chamber to say, ‘Either we get what we want or we’ll shut down the government,’ or even worse, we will not allow the U.S. Treasury to pay its bills and put the United States in default for the first time in history.”

-President Barack Obama

When it comes to history, never say never. If you go back far enough, almost everything has happened at least once—and sometimes several times. And that’s how it is with U.S. defaults.

[PoliticAverse]

1. 2011 NPR story on the 1979 default...

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/11/137773341/looking-at-when-the-u-s-last-defaulted-on-treasury-bonds