Tank the economy in order to score political points? Ummmm.....no thanks.

It’s beyond me why Congress is playing footsie with raising the national debt ceiling.

Moody’s Analytics observes: “(A) default would be a catastrophic blow… . Americans would pay for this default for generations… . That will…be a lasting corrosive on the economy, significantly diminishing it.” (1)

Were a default to happen, Moody’s forecasts that six million jobs would be lost, unemployment would rise to 9%, the stock market would drop by a third, and the costs of borrowing would spike. (1)

Actually, that’s not a game of political footsie. Or of political chicken.

That’s a game of political roulette.

It was Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the treasury, who took on the morass of Revolutionary War debt and engineered a course to make good on it.

Smithsonian Magazine observes: “Hamilton suggested that the United States look at debt not as a problem, but as an asset. He proposed to fund the debt through a gradual schedule of dependable tax resources…” (2)

Hamilton’s masterful work permitted our nation to go on and become an economic powerhouse.

Do we really want to squander over two hundred years of sterling credit history? For nothing?

Actually, it’d be worse than nothing. It’d result in a cascade of catastrophic national losses. A stunted economy would wound millions of Americans for years to come.

All for cheap political points?

Ummmm,,,no thanks.

Sources:

(1) https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2021/playing-a-dangerous-game-with-the-debt-limit.pdf

(2) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-debt-national-bank-two-parties-1789-american-history-great-courses-plus-180962954/