Looming Debt Ceiling Doesn’t Worry Middle Georgia Investment Firm; Yet

It seems it’s the only thing to watch or read about in the news. How are Washington officials going to come to an agreement on the encroaching debt deadline?

Raymond Smith of Smith, Brown, & Grover Investment Securities in Macon, says he is optimistic the debt ceiling will be raised. In fact, he says it has to be raised in order for the county to continue functioning.

“Simply put, we have to raise the debt ceiling, because we over spend our receipt. We’re spending more than we take in,” Smith explains.

But the looming question is, how does the government get out of this hole they seem to be stuck in? And are we too far in the hole to even dig ourselves back out? Smith says, we’ve actually been in a worse spot than we are now. He says, in terms of a percentage, we were in more debt after World War Two.

“So it’s still a number we can get out of, because we’ve gotten out of it before,” Smith said.

Smith broke down the debt ceiling talks, by compairing it to people owning a credit card and not being able to pay off that card. So, they take out a second card, to help pay off the first.

“So this credit cards maxed out, and you get one of those offers in the mail. And you know you shouldn’t, but you don’t even have enough to pay that interest. So you open that second credit card, take a little bit off of it to pay the interest on the first. That’s the process of raising the debt ceiling and running deficit spending,” Smith says.

With an optimistic view, Smith predicts the government will not default on its loans, and sometime next week, the debt ceiling will be raised. He says that isn’t the way to fix the problem, it only post-phones the problem. But he said it’s either raise the limit, or the government goes into default and people do not get help with things like Social Security and Medicaid.