"Yellen warns of global economic downturn if US defaults on debt ceiling"

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the US should adopt a different system for national finances to avoid repeated standoffs with Congress over government spending. The US government ran up against its legal borrowing limit of $31.381tn in January, and the Treasury Department began implementing “extraordinary measures” to avoid missing payments on its bills. Yellen suggested that Congress could repeal the debt ceiling or handle it differently, or the president could decide to raise the debt ceiling and inform Congress, which could vote to override that decision. For now, raising the debt ceiling to avert a default on the national debt remains the only short-term solution.