Is it for the best?

I had great misgivings about whatever "deal" Obama and Boehner were, in private, supposedly about to make. Now it seems that the deal, whatever it was, is off.

I am not an economist nor a seer, so I can't tell with any approximation of authority exactly what effect a debt default would have on all the thousands of things it's supposed to have an effect on. But I do know that cutting vital social and regulatory programs will have a very serious effect indeed on the quality of life for a large number of Americans. The last time Geitner and company told us that the sky would fall, we bailed out the banks -- especially the investment banks -- and the sky fell for lots of people except the investment bankers and their pals.

Surely there is some limit to the kinds of things we will compromise on in order to keep things going the way they are now going, which isn't too great at all. My main financial advisor suggests that if the debt ceiling is not raised, Obama should go on national TV and announce that in order to avoid default, he will continue to pay the military and Social Security and a handful of vital services, but that all federal payments to the states will cease until funds are available; also, no checks will be cut to any members of the House or Senate. Since a lot of the states which take in more federal dollars than they pay out in taxes are actually Republican states, that may force some people who profess to hate government to give things a second thought. Ooops, I mean in many of their cases, a first thought.

As Obama himself has said, the creation of programs to help the less fortunate and less powerful  is part of who we are. If we cut these programs, then who are we?

There are moral defaults as well as financial ones.