The U.S. Treasury yesterday proceeded with announcing a pair of T-bill auctions for early next week that some market participants see as an indication that the debt ceiling's so-called "X-date" may not in fact be June 1, Reuters reported. Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Management said it would auction $119 billion of 3-month and 6-month bills on Tuesday, with the sales formally settling two days later on June 1. That's the date that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has repeatedly pointed to as a possible deadline for the government running short of the funds to cover all of its obligations unless a deal between the White House and congressional Republicans is reached to lift the $31.4 billion U.S. debt cap. According to research firm Wrightson ICAP, the bureau would not typically announce an upcoming sale "until it is certain that it has room under the debt ceiling for the new securities." Gennadiy Goldberg, senior rates strategist at TD Securities in New York, said the fact that Treasury proceeded with the announcements on Thursday "does suggest that the Treasury probably has cash to settle the security. They have suggested in the past that they would not announce auctions that they did not believe they had the means to settle. So I do think that's a positive note." "But," Goldberg continued, "that's really where the positivity stops because really we know it's very likely in the first two weeks of June the Treasury will run out of cash."
