Bureau Of Public Debt

What Was the Bureau of Public Debt?

The Bureau of Public Debt was an agency inside the United States Department of the Treasury that was responsible for borrowing funds for the federal government to utilize, keeping up with accounts of the government's outstanding debts, and offering types of assistance to other federal government agencies.

Bureau of Public Debt Explained

The Bureau of Public Debt was shaped in 1940 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of a Treasury plan to redesign the Public Debt Service, the former name of the agency. To finance its undertakings and satisfy outstanding debt obligations, the government can either print more money, increase taxes, or borrow the funds required. Printing money is costly and leads to inflation due to an increased supply of money in the economy. Expanding taxes means less disposable income for taxpayers and less incentive to spend money which could lead to a contraction in the economy. Since government debt issues are perceived to be risk-free as they are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, the cost of fund-raising through government bonds is extremely low. To centralize the federal government and its debt, the Bureau of Public Debt was made.

The mission of the agency was not to repay any existing debt or to show the public responsible spending however to borrow money. The Bureau of Public Debt acquired debt financing for the government by selling fixed-income securities, for example, Treasury bills, bonds, notes, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), and U.S. Savings Bonds. The agency, when it was active, borrowed about $5 trillion dollars worth of funds consistently for the federal government. It managed to do this through north of 200 sales of marketable securities every year, where investors bid for the securities as they were delivered by the government. The agency had north of 40,000 offices situated all through the U.S. to work with the closeouts and sales of its debt securities to the public.

A portion of the debt issued required the bureau to pay periodic interest rates as compensation to investors and lenders. Upon maturity, the Bureau of Public Debt recovered the securities from investors and reimbursed the principal investment. Each time the agency borrowed or reimbursed the loans, the outstanding debt of the country changed. Each day at 11:30 am EST, the size of the public debt was reported by the bureau.

As well as dealing with the physical sale, receipt, and safekeeping of US Treasury securities and Savings bonds, the Bureau of Public Debt was likewise responsible for processing claims of taken, lost, or obliterated securities.

On October 7, 2012, the Bureau of Public Debt was consolidated with the Financial Management Service (FMS) to make the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) under the bearing of Timothy Geithner, the United States Secretary of the Treasury. The Fiscal Service oversees operations, for example, giving government-wide accounting and reporting services; dealing with the assortment of delinquent debt owed to the government; giving central payment services to federal program agencies; gathering any voluntary donations made to the government for reduction of the public debt; and so on.