The national debt: Is Chicken Little right this time?

Sunday morning, I was amused hearing *Christine Amanpour stump the newly elected head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde. She asked her to be specific as to what would happen if the U.S. were to default on its debts.

This early morning, I read an article in the Washington Post answering the question to my satisfaction. After reading the well written article by Brady Dennis, I was mindful of a joke I heard many years ago in one of its many variations, I would imagine:

A very old and very rich man lay on his dying bed surrounded by all his servants and close family members. In his dying breath, raising his head, he managed enough strength to say, “Pay your bills….”

Hence:
Delayed payments in 1979 offer glimpse of default consequences
By Brady Dennis
Excerpt:
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that inaction “would be catastrophic for the economy” and added that “no responsible leader would say the United States of America, for the first time in its history, should not pay its bills, meet its obligations.”

And
“You hear lot of people say, ‘The government never defaulted.’ The truth is, yeah, they did. It might have been small, it might have been inadvertent, but it happened,” said Terry Zivney, a finance professor at Ball State University who co-authored a paper on the episode entitled “The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills.”
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/delayed-payments-in-1979-offer-glimpse-of-default-consequences/2011/07/10/gIQARRBj7H_story.html?hpid=z1

As always,
BB
* http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/imf-head-christine-lagarde-imagine-united-states-default/story?id=14038334