About this episode
The U.S. debt ceiling is once again back in focus. Jason Cole, Executive Director of Public Policy and Corporate Social Responsibility, and Chief U.S. Economist Lara Rhame join FireSide to break down what exactly is happening in Washington D.C., and how it might affect our economy and financial markets.
Transcript excerpt:
Jason Cole (00:00):
I mean, I’ll just start the spoiler alert. I do think this will get worked out. The question is, and the risk is, and it’s not a zero risk, is does it get worked out before we hit a technical default?
Kara O’Halloran (00:20):
Welcome back to FireSide, a podcast from FS Investments. On today’s episode, the debt ceiling is once again back in focus. The U.S. government reached its statutory debt ceiling on January 19 and is currently enacting extraordinary measures to pay the country’s bills and service its debt. We seem to talk about this every couple of years, and invariably, Congress raises or suspends the debt ceiling before the U.S. defaults on its obligations, but in some ways, things feel a little bit different this time around. So, on today’s episode, I want to focus on whether and how this time could be different, and most importantly, what all this means for our economy and financial markets. It is a lot to cover, so, I have brought in a few experts from around our firm to dissect all of this. But first, I am really excited to introduce you to Ginevra Czech, who you’ll be hearing a lot more from going forward. Ginevra runs our client value add programs and is the new host of the FS Thrive podcast, which you can get right here on the FireSide podcast feed. Ginevra, welcome to FireSide, you’re making your podcast debut.
Ginevra Czech (01:21):
Yes, I’m very excited. Hello everyone, like Kara said, I am Ginevra Czech, the director of our client value add programs and the soon-to-be host of FS Thrive. I’ve actually been a longtime listener and fan of the FireSide podcast, so it is very exciting to be here live with the team recording and I’m actually even more excited to introduce another one of our guests today, who is Jason Cole. He is the FS Executive Director of Public Policy and Corporate Social Responsibility, and I could read his bio all day, it’s impressive, it’s extensive about his background in government affairs, but it would take a lot of our very precious time. So, trust me when I tell you we’ve got the exact right person for the topic ahead of us. And I am very excited to hear his thoughts on how, what’s happening in D.C. impacts not only the economy, and our financial markets, but more importantly what that means for our advisors and their clients. So, we’re going to focus on the topic at hand today that we’ve been hearing about a lot from our advisors: the U.S. debt ceiling, like Kara said. I’m excited for the conversation and Kara, let’s kick it off.
Kara O’Halloran (02:30):
Awesome. And rounding out our lineup, you know her, you love her: the one and only Lara Rhame, to get the economic perspective. So let’s dive right in. Thank you also much for being here. Jason, I wanna open with you, as I said, the U.S. hit our debt ceiling last week. We’re now enacting these extraordinary measures, is what they’re called. Very briefly, what is the government doing right now and what happens when these measures run out?
