Has the US federal government ever defaulted on a loan?

Question

A number of newspapers claim that the US federal government has never defaulted on its loans (though I noted that it did restructure them in 1930).

In particular, the Economist states in the article “The Debt Ceiling and Default”, Jan 13th 2011, that the US has never defaulted:

I have yet to find a similar ranking for the federal government. This should not be surprising; the United States has never defaulted. There is the fourteenth amendment to the constitution which says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States… shall not be questioned.” The purpose of this section was to forbid the United States from honouring Confederate debts. The Supreme Court has apparently ruled that it also bars Congress from voiding a government bond, although not from abrogating the gold clause as it did in 1934.

In contrast, Kenneth Rogoff states that the USA has defaulted before:

“We went off the gold standard,” he observes, and the price of gold, which used to be $20 an ounce, suddenly jumped to $35 an ounce.

“That was a default on domestic debt,” Rogoff observes. “You would be amazed at how many countries have amnesia with respect to their default(s).”

Both are references from eminent professionals, so I'm left wondering which is correct.

Why's there a disagreement between what Kenneth Rogoff states and what the Economist states – is it just a matter of semantics?

Are there indisputable examples of where the US federal government has defaulted?

Answer 1

The answer is yes. The US has defaulted on their debt once. In 1979 it postponed sending some of the checks on time for technical reasons.

From the article Delayed payments in 1979 offer glimpse of default consequences dated July 10, 2011 in the Washington Post, citing Terry Zivney and Richard Marcus, "The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills," The Financial Review 24 (3). (1989): 475–489.:

In fact, there was one short-lived incident in the spring of 1979 that offers a glimpse of some of the problems and costs that might arise if the stalemate on Capitol Hill continues. Then, as now, Congress had been playing a game of chicken with the debt limit, raising it to $830 billion – compared with today’s $14.3 trillion – only after Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal warned that the country was hours away from the first default in its history.

That last-minute approval, combined with a flood of investor demand for Treasury bills and a series of technical glitches in processing the backlog of paperwork, resulted in thousands of late payments to holders of Treasury bills that were maturing that April and May.

“You hear lot of people say, ‘The government never defaulted.’ The truth is, yeah, they did . . . It might have been small, it might have been inadvertent, but it happened,” said Terry Zivney, a finance professor at Ball State University who co-authored a paper on the episode entitled “The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills.”

Answer 2

There is this example from 1933:

The United States quite clearly and overtly defaulted on its debt as an expediency in 1933, the first year of Franklin Roosevelt​'s presidency. This was an intentional repudiation of its obligations, supported by a resolution of Congress and later upheld by the Supreme Court.

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In particular, U.S. bonds, including those issued to finance the American participation in the First World War​, provided the holders of the bonds with an unambiguous promise that the U.S. government would give them the option to be repaid in gold coin.

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Unfortunately for the bondholders, when President Roosevelt and the Congress decided that it was a good idea to depreciate the currency in the economic crisis of the time, they also decided not to honor their unambiguous obligation to pay in gold.

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So five of the nine justices explicitly stated that the obligations of the United States had been repudiated. There can be no doubt that the candid conclusion of this highly interesting chapter of our national financial history is that, under sufficient threat, crisis and pressure, a clear default on Treasury bonds did occur.

Answer 3

The US is in a unique situation as the US dollar has been accepted as the exchange standard and as the Reserve Currency. So when it needs to borrow money, it can borrow US dollars and repay with US dollars. In addition, the US Government is the only one allowed by law to print US dollars. Because it is held as a reserve and used for exchange, the US can get away with financing its own debt with the costs being absorbed by everyone who holds the dollar (which is a far greater number than all other countries).

The Federal Reserve is a govenment entity that is part of the Department of the Treasury that handles both the printing of money and issuing of Treasury Bonds. Because of this the US can choose never to default.

That said when you get a treasury bond for $1,000,000 you buy it for $999,500 with a 6 month maturity date you expect that in 6 months you will have a bond worth $1m. But if the government decides during that 6 month period to create a signifigant quantity of dollars, such that the value of the dollar is diluted so $1,000,000 is only worth $999,450, it is not default but it is also not what you expected when you purchaces your T-Bill 6 months earlier.

If the US had to buy, say, gold to back its T-bills, let's look at the two values: a 6 month T-bill bought Feb 1 for $1m versus a T-bill that promised an amount of gold worth $1m on Feb 1 with a July 1 Maturity.

Format is Currency $1m Feb 1 2011 - Value of return on July 1 2011 in US$ vs had you kept your original currency

US Dollar - $940253.16
Gold - $887230.95
Euro - $952920.52
Canadian Dollar - $967767.47

Feb1 xch rates
Jul1 xch Rates

So actual default? No. But If I took a $1,000 loan from the bank and when it came due I only paid them $940, they are not going to just accept that as paid in full. But government effectively does just that. This is changes in valuation not inflation.

US Inflation rate - 3.5588% (Per year)

Devaluation rate - 11.94% (Feb1-Jul12011)

To be fair QE is not the only downward pressure on the value of the dollar. We are currently reaping the result of overspending and policies that encourage wealth exodus. This is not the result of any one president, but goes back about 20 years, through several changes in leadership of all levels of government.

(Updated gold to reflect the same metrics as other currencies)

UPDATE CONSUMER CONFIDENCE CRASHES

The whole point is of this is that while technically and legally, there is no default the expectation is that the government will honor its debt. If they allow their currency to devalue, allow hyper-inflation to set in, and print money to pay debt, then they are not doing that. If it was just gold that was going up then it would not hold water. But look at all of the currencies listed. It shows consistent losses by the dollar. Roughly around 6-8% almost across the board over 6 months. That is effective default even if it is not technically default.