Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud
Reuters
Jeff Mason and Andy Sullivan
February 9, 2025 at 2:19 PM

(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said his administration was examining U.S. Treasury debt payments for possible fraud and suggested that the country’s $36 trillion debt load might not be that high.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said administration officials who have been combing through payment records in an effort to identify wasteful spending have turned their attention to the debt payments that play a central role in the global financial system.

“We’re even looking at Treasuries,” Trump said. “There could be a problem – you’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem.”

He added: “It could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought.”

From Josh Marshall:

I suspect this will just end up being something Old Man Trump said on a plane and we won’t hear about it again. But after recents, who are we kidding? Anything is possible. On Air Force One today en route to the Super Bowl Trump told reporters that DOGE analysts (whatever that means) had found “irregularities” in US treasuries and that that the US may not be obligated to pay some of them. “Maybe we have less debt than we thought,” he said.

Needless to say, this is quite literally violating the express language of the 14th Amendment which says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”…

One other point worth noting is that Trump seems to be basing this on some analysis from the DOGE boys. This appears to have been one of the DOGE boys main goals at Treasury, getting access to details about what kinds of payments Treasury makes, the answer being close to everything the US government does outside of the Pentagon and some of the Pentagon stuff too. The Treasury also services the US debt, which is what we’re talking about here. I’m less clear on what access in what part of Treasury Department these guys could have gotten more information about how the Treasury Department sells and service Treasury notes. But all that detail aside, imagine thinking that by downloading a ton of data and having a few days to analyze it you could make the determination that a significant amount of the US national debt wasn’t real and didn’t have to be paid. It’s hardly the craziest thing we’ve seen over recent days. But it’s still worth noting how nuts that is.

Paul Krugman
‪@pkrugman.bsky.social‬

For those not familiar with how financial markets work, US Treasuries are the ultimate safe asset, used as collateral for everything. Even a hint that some Treasuries might not be honored could bring everything to a screeching halt 1/

Musk and Trump are both in the habit of stiffing people they owe money. If markets even suspect that this habit will extend to Treasuries, God help us 2/
February 9, 2025 at 6:48 PM
https://bsky.app/profile/pkrugman.bsky.social/post/3lhrwdij26c2t

Defaulting oh the debt ceiling.
Lips so pursed