Shrinking Debt-Ceiling Window Has Markets on Edge as Yellen Reiterates June Warning

US bills that mature in early June are showing ongoing signs of concern about the risk of a government default after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated to lawmakers that her department’s ability to avoid breaching the statutory debt ceiling via special accounting maneuvers could be exhausted around then.

The window for a resolution of the debt-ceiling standoff is clearly narrowing, with the Treasury saying last week that it had run through all but about $88 billion of its authorized extraordinary measures as of last Wednesday. The Treasury has been releasing updates on that figure each Friday for the past couple of weeks, although it did also publish numbers the day after Yellen’s last letter to Congress. The letter comes a day before another scheduled meeting on the debt cap between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said that ongoing talks were yielding little progress.