US default would threaten global economy: Yellen
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday urged Congress to raise the $31.4 trillion federal debt limit and avert an unprecedented default that would trigger a global economic downturn and risk undermining US global economic leadership.
Yellen issued the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings in remarks prepared for a press conference ahead of a meeting in Japan with her counterparts from the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations, as well as India, Indonesia and Brazil.
"A default would threaten the gains that we've worked so hard to make over the past few years in our pandemic recovery. And it would spark a global downturn that would set us back much further," she said. "It would also risk undermining US global economic leadership and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests."
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said failure by Congress to act before Treasury runs out of money to pay the government's bills risked throwing the US economy into a recession.
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