Ralph Benko: Interest increases central to looming debt crisis

There is a brewing crisis, which, if it develops as seems inevitable, has the potential of reducing all of the drama of the early Obama administration to child’s play beginning next year. Only this time, it will be the government’s crisis, not the nation’s.

The New York Times recently noted that the government has gone on what the Concord Coalition’s Robert Bixby calls a “teaser rate” borrowing binge, at an interest rate approaching … zero. Rates will rise, substantially, and soon. (The Treasury Department already is attempting to lock in rates on longer-term borrowing– already driving its short-term costs up.)