Who do you trust about what default would do to our economy?
Republican Congressman Ted Yoho : “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."
Republican Congressman John Fleming : "Technically, it's not possible to default because there's always enough revenue to cover the interest."
Republican Congressman Mo Brooks : "In fact, our credit rating should be improved by not raising the debt ceiling."
OR
Former President Ronald Reagan : “The full consequences of a default - or even the serious prospect of default - by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate."
Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Director for Economic Policy Steve Bell : "I don't know any serious person who doesn't think this will be cataclysmic."
Ben Bernanke, Chairman Federal Reserve Bank : "A government shutdown, and perhaps even more so a failure to raise the debt limit, could have very serious consequences for the financial markets and for the economy."
Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics : "It will be devastating to the economy… Consumer confidence will sharply decline, investor confidence, business confidence. Businesses will stop hiring, consumers will stop spending, the stock market will fall significantly in value, borrowing costs for businesses and households will rise."
Martin Regalia, Chief Economist, U.S. Chamber of Commerce : "[There] is only one option and that is to do whatever is necessary to keep the U.S. government from defaulting."
Omar Sharif, U.S. Economist, RBS Securities : “The last time the Treasury was in this position, in 2011, the negotiations ‘put the brakes on for a lot of businesses as far as hiring and capital spending decisions they were making at the time.’"
Alec Phillips, U.S. Political Economist, Goldman Sachs : “Even a short delay in increasing the debt ceiling could have important negative consequences for consumer, business and financial market confidence, and would probably put pressure on stocks and other risk assets."
Rob Nichols, President and CEO, Financial Services Forum : “There’d be a host of severe economic consequences associated with debt default. We’d have negative impact for growth, job creation, interest rates would spike, it would make our deficit problems even harder to tackle. Raising the debt ceiling is a critical and urgent task."
The Economist Magazine : “Failure to raise the debt ceiling would force immediate spending cuts equal to 6% of GDP. Not only would that threaten to send the economy back into recession. It would also deprive doctors, pensioners, contractors and millions of others of money needed to meet their own obligations, setting off a chain reaction of defaults. Nor would the sanctity of the debt be guaranteed. Disgruntled creditors could challenge the legality of prioritizing interest payments; populists could demand that Chinese bondholders be paid last, not first. One miscalculation could leave the Treasury without enough money to make an interest payment. Even a few days’ default would roil the global financial system, which relies on Treasuries in countless transactions. The mere possibility could incite skittish investors to dump their holdings, driving up interest rates."
University of Chicago Economist Anil K. Kashyap : “Deciding whether or not to pay the debts incurred to fund the previously approved tax and spending is nuts."
