The floating debt of more than $2,500,000,000 complicates the immediate fiscal problems confronting the U. S. Treasury, remarks the Guaranty Survey. Including the Victory Bonds and Notes, there will mature in about two years approximately $7,500,000,000. Within the two years' period this sum may be reduced by about $1,000,000,000, the Secretary estimates, through sinking fund operations and through miscellaneous annual retirements. The remaining $6,500,000,000,_ the Secretary says, will have to be refunded. Accordingly it is announced that the Treasury's policy will be to vary its offerings of certificates of indebtedness with notes having from three to five years' maturity. The object is to distribute the maturities of the short-term debt over the period from 1923, when the outstanding Victory issues mature, to 1928, when the Third Liberty loan matures.
The plan contemplates the actual retirement of this $7,500,000,000 of short-term and floating debt by 1928, It appears that such a rate of debt reduction would be none too rapid. Experience has demonstrated the wisdom of paying off a war debt within a short period. At the present time, when business is undergoing readjustment, the taxation which any considerable reduction of the Government debt makes necessary is particularly burdensome, but more prosperous times are undoubtedly ahead. Accordingly, the retirement. of $7,500,000,000 of the debt by 1928 may prove entirely practicable without unduly burdening the taxpayers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.