The Government Debt Ceiling: What Did Eisenhower Do?

July 27, 2011

Published with Anne C. Canfield in AEIdeas.

“Nothing is ever new, it is just history repeating itself”—at least in finance. In his A History of the Federal Reserve,¹ Allan Meltzer describes what happened during the Eisenhower administration when the Treasury ran out of debt authorization and Congress did not raise the debt ceiling. This was in 1953.

In order to keep making payments, the Treasury increased its gold certificate deposits at the Federal Reserve, which it could do from its dollar “profits” because the price of gold in dollars had risen. The Fed then credited the Treasury’s account with them, thereby increasing the Treasury’s cash balance. Treasury then spent the money without exceeding the debt limit.

By the spring of 1954, Congress had raised the debt ceiling from $275 to $280 billion (2 percent or so of today’s limit), so ordinary debt issuance could continue.

The Secretary of the Treasury still is authorized to issue gold certificates to the Federal Reserve Banks, which will then credit the Treasury’s cash account.² This is correctly characterized as monetizing the Treasury’s gold, of which it owns more than 8,000 tons. An old law says this gold is worth 42 and 2/9 dollars per ounce, but we know the actual market value is about 38 times that, at more than $1,600 per ounce.

Should we follow Eisenhower’s example?

Alex J. Pollock is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  Anne Canfield is president of Canfield & Associates, Washington, D.C.

1. Allan Meltzer, A History of the Federal Reserve, Volume 2, Book 1, pp. 110 and 168.

2. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2010 Annual Report, p. 39.