Image via WikipediaAmerica defaulting will throw the global economy into a Grand Recession. There are people who never made peace with the fact that, oh well, there is a now a black guy in the White House.
The racist white Republicans' hatred for the folks out there in the Third World is so strong, they would be willing to jack up the unemployment rate in America all the way to 29% if that is what it will take to inflict pain on the Third World folks.
This divided government thing is obviously not working. I say give the House back to Barack Obama. Like they kicked Mubarak out in Egypt it is time to kick the Republicans out. March.
The New Yorker: Smash The Ceiling: y the subprime meltdown, skyrocketing oil prices, the Eurozone debt crisis, and even the Tohoku earthquake ...... —a failure to raise the debt ceiling, which would almost certainly throw the economy back into recession ...... the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. There’s no debt limit in the Constitution. ...... Congress can simply vote to lift it, as it has done more than seventy times in the past fifty years. But it’s too strong because its negative consequences (default, higher interest rates, financial turmoil) are disastrously out of proportion to the behavior it’s trying to regulate. For the U.S. to default now, when investors are happily lending it money at exceedingly reasonable rates, would be akin to shooting yourself in the head for failing to follow your diet...... time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. ...... Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call “integrative”—taking everyone’s interests and values into account...... by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism ..... “It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself” when it comes to brinksmanship. It doesn’t, in short, help to be President Obama. That may be why all the deals that have been taken seriously this season rely much more heavily on spending cuts than on tax increases: the deals represent Republican priorities, because the Republicans seem to be more willing than the Democrats to let the country default........ Instead of figuring out ways to raise the debt ceiling, we should simply go ahead and abolish it.
