Debt ceiling Tuesday

Was watching Howard Fineman and Lawrence O'Donnell discussing the mess earlier tonight on O'Donnell's show. They agreed that when all is said and done, the debt ceiling will be passed, in a bill all of one sentence long with no strings attached (the way debt-ceiling bills normally get passed) and this whole game of chicken will have been for naught.

And TPM's Josh Marshall has this ("Cat To Emerge from Bag?").

There's an interesting possibility, even a likelihood, we may see unfold over the coming days. And if it happens, we might find out quickly whether there's a limit past which consensus opinion, the Wall Street/business interests who hold such a sway over national politics and even elements within the GOP will not indulge this mania.

I mentioned before that it's not clear whether John Boehner even has the votes for his own plan in the chamber he runs. In other words, will House Republicans even support Boehner's plan, the plan of their nominal leader, let alone anything that would pass the Senate or garner the president's signature?

At that point everyone should be able to see there aren't two sides here to tango, we're listening to the sound of one hand compromising.

The scenario being floated informally now by a lot of observers is that if and when we come to that point Republicans in the Senate, Wall Street and just a lot sane people in general who haven't come off the sidelines yet or haven't really been paying attention just say: Dude, you don't have a full deck, this is over.

O'Donnell also had Bill Maher on the show. When O'Donnell asked him whether he might be able to find some comedic value in a possible government default and the resulting economic meltdown, Maher said, "No, I've got money, too."

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This is what Josh links to in the first link from his post above ("Hamilton's Dream," also by Josh):

As we move closer to intentionally jettisoning the full faith and credit of the United States and eyeing the pulse of the bond market, we shouldn't forget one salient fact. The centrality of debt holders in our constitutional order isn't a bug, it's a feature. Indeed, the national debt -- created through the federal assumption of state war debts -- was created to do precisely this: get the holders of bonds, necessarily wealthy and powerful people, to have a vested interest in the fixity and stability of the federal government. 

The adults in the room knew all this from the outset.