A Government-Backed REIT That Now Yields 5.8%

When it comes to REIT investing, a tenant’s credit quality is extremely important. But what about the credit quality of the U.S. government?
As per Investopedia,
the United States has a very good record of paying its bills on time. The national government has defaulted on its debts just twice - back in 1790 (under the huge burden of debts incurred in the war for independence) and again in 1933 when the government explicitly changed the rules and unilaterally decided it did not have to honor the obligation to repay its debts in gold.
However, the federal government has faced a few times when creative accounting had to be employed. Nevertheless, for all of its faults and flaws, the U.S. scores well in terms of paying its bills.
Its shocking to see the huge amount of U.S. debt, over $21 trillion, that ranks in the upper third of countries, much better than Japan, France, Canada, and Germany. The chart below tracks U.S. debt from 1989 to 2017. It increased 608.61% up to $20.245 trillion in September 2017. The annual sum includes both debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt.

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The U.S. government has an advantage that most debtors do not - if the U.S. government needs to pay its debts, it can simply print the money to do so. If you or I tried that, we would soon get a visit from the Secret Service and our credit scores would no longer be of much concern. Click this useful link to get a real-time picture of US debt.

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