Marjorie Taylor Greene finds a way to cash in on public debt

Last September, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called to a halt stop government spending. Four days later, she lent money to the government.

Financial disclosures show that on September 21, the anti-government conspiracy theorist bought between $250,000 and $500,000 of US Treasury bills, low-yielding financial instruments that help the government finance debt and pay for expenses such as wages.

Greene, of course, presented herself as a fierce tax hawk, going as far as co-sponsor a bill earlier this year titled “Recognize the National Debt as a Threat to National Security.”

But Greene mustn’t think that’s much of a threat: Buying Treasuries was his biggest deal of the year, and it’s not even close.

Greene, who is a multi-millionaire, has traded heavily in stocks since joining Congress a year ago, executing 76 buys and 14 sells. Of those 90 trades, the second largest buying range behind buying treasury bills was between $15,001 and $50,000, a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Congress disclosures only give dollar amounts within ranges.)

At most, the investment in Treasuries — a joint purchase between Greene and her husband, Perry — would have nearly quintupled the total amount of securities they purchased last year. Greene’s 2019 nominee disclosure showed cash holdings between $50,000 and $100,000, but that item does not appear on his 2020 filing, indicating that the tickets had expired.

It also looks like Greene’s debt ceiling threats may have reduced the return on his own investment, although in general there’s not a lot of juice to be had in safe and secure Treasuries. low yield.

Still, the possibility of a government default last fall made investors nervous, and the rhetoric of Greene and his Republican colleagues injected additional risk into markets. As a result, yields rose just as Greene made his purchase, then fell once the crisis subsided, according to the Treasury Department. Data.

Asked about the investment, a spokesperson for Greene’s office provided a statement that said, in full, that “Congresswoman Greene has an investment adviser who has full discretion over her account.”

The statement did not specify who made the purchase or made the decision to do so, and the spokesperson did not respond when asked in a follow-up email. The spokesperson also did not respond to follow-ups on whether the adviser was aware of Greene’s ideology and the routine tax bombshell, or whether the agent still retained his confidence.

Yet, advise or not, it’s hard to ignore the context.

Last March, Greene noted in a speech to the House, the debt threatened to “enslave the American people, our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and generations to come.” She then moved to adjourn Congress, blocking a vote on a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.

During his short time in Congress, Greene endorsed several government shutdowns for Democratic spending programs. That’s exactly what she did in a interview with Steve Bannon, rehabilitated MAGA influencer, a few days before his purchase of Treasuries.

“You can’t trust these people with your money,” she told Bannon.

Greene, who co-owns a major construction company with her husband, then argued that the private sector would do a better job with the country’s infrastructure.

“Guess what? The American people can do it at home without the government! I say, get in the fight, shut it down! she said. “We shouldn’t be spending that!”

Then, a week to the day after pumping no less than half a million dollars into the government, Greene spat a series of tweets from his now-suspended account criticizing an array of mysterious government-funded projects.

“Just pass the bill and we’ll all know what’s in it. To the right? I mean why read over 3,000 pages of trillions of expenses? she posted, alongside a photo of what appeared to be the bill on her desk.

“Silly Marjorie,” she added. “Professional politicians don’t read the most expensive spending bills in history. That’s not how things are in the swamp.

Two weeks later, Greene once again took to the floor of the House to Argue that Congress shouldn’t raise the debt ceiling and once again decided to “shut it up”, tweeting “#peopleoverpoliticians”.

Last month was back, calling for “shut it up” on the $29 trillion national debt it had just borne with its own money. But when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell struck a debt ceiling deal with Democrats, Greene struck down him as “Biden [bitch].” Ex-President Trump job who burns himself.

And in a floor speech last February, Greene cited her supposedly hawkish tax ideology as one of the main reasons she was drawn to Trump’s policies in the first place.

“I thought, ‘Finally, maybe this is someone who will do something about the things that bother me deeply.’ Like the fact that we are so deeply in debt,” she said. noted. (Trump, however, had just weeks before that speech proven Greene’s hunch to be very wrong, ending his presidency with a $7.8 trillion increase in debt; the 36% rise was the third largest in US history, behind wartime presidents George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln.)

But buying is all the more curious because this kind of rhetoric from Greene was injecting additional risk into the markets.

Generally, financial advisers consider treasury bills to be one of the safest places to park money because the government guarantees full payment. Short-term financial instruments offer a range of maturity options, from as short as one month to as long as one year. But because they are short-term, political chicken games around the debt ceiling — risking government default — can sometimes discourage investors.

Signs of this dislike were apparent when Greene made his purchase. The day after its investment, the Federal Reserve announcement that Treasury bills due to mature in the next two months had become “moderately high as investors reduced exposure to securities likely to present a risk of late payment”, meaning that market appetite for treasury bills had worsened in the face of the possibility of a default.

Treasury Data also shows that Greene made her investment as Treasury yields rose, i.e., investors turned away from threats that Greene herself was making. Increased returns mean a better return on investment. (Greene’s spokesperson did not disclose the maturity date of his Treasury bills.)

Jim Vogel, executive vice president of FHN Financial, told The Daily Beast that because investors were burned prior debt ceiling cage matches, they started looking elsewhere in the fall when the weather started to run out, causing yields to rebound. However, Vogel said, that didn’t necessarily mean the GOP hostage-taking sparked genuine default fears.

“Most of the feedback this time was less about fear of getting reimbursed and more about explaining why you took the risk,” Vogel explained. He observed that it was a “milder episode” of uncertainty, as investors realized that full Democratic control of Congress and the White House “could allow Democrats to act unilaterally if they This was a default scenario.”

Guy Lebas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney, explained that although the Treasury market has been on the rise, government instruments are stable and do not experience the same fluctuations as short-term private investments. , such as stocks. “If you’re not buying billions, fluctuations in returns have a very small impact on returns,” Lebas said.

But Ben Edwards, a securities expert at William S. Boyd Law School at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, pointed out that the debt ceiling showdown still creates a lot of uncertainty and that any uncertainty generally puts the capital in danger.

“Ironically, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her friends are the risk,” Edwards said. “But at the same time, treasury bonds are still a safe bet. The US government is more likely to pay the debt than Apple.

Disclosures also show that the Greenes bought between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of Apple stock last year.