OK... so what happens at midnight tomorrow?

[AndrewRN]

I have heard various scenarios of how this would all fall out - anywhere from Armageddon to nothing happening. Would we still have a few days to start paying our bills before it gets real bad?

Just wondering how nervous I should be after the house screws us all tomorrow and we hit the deadline at midnight.

Inquiring minds want to know!

[SamYeager]

1. Well, nothing would ahppen at midnight

You'd see futures trading tank first overnight.

Then we'd lose our credit ratings starting in the morning.

Things would get worse as the day drags on. Curbs would probably go in place on the NYSE and other exchanges.

In a few days trillions of dollars would evaporate.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Yes, followed by rising interest rates and reduced buying power of the dollar. n/t

[Kber]

2. Boenher turns into a big orange pumpkin

Seriously, it's not an exact deadline. We could run out of money tomorrow evening, Thursday afternoon, Friday at 1:00 am.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. Armageddon begins.

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. $120 billion worth of short term obligations do not get redeemed.

That makes anyone holding similar issues nervous as hell and anyone looking to buy similar issues rethink their intent.

[SummerSnow]

6. this might happen

[AndrewRN]

7. LOL!

[Agnosticsherbet]

8. A budget meeting of almost every Budget director of every country in the world to decide

what to do with about 18 Trillion dollars in worthless US money. The Chinese, especially, are gong to pissed right the fuck off. I would not be surprised if there were immediate moves to change the worlds reserve currency to something other than dollars, probably a basket of various currencies. But it could take some time.

Big businesses and corporations that have invested in US Bonds (who are not already doing this) will be divesting themselves of those worthless assets. I suspect the bond market will crash and burn at some point.

If you have US Saving Bonds, you should consider framing them next to your Confederate States of America dollars.

It is likely that some inflation will begin almost immediately. It is a good idea to go shopping tomorrow rather than wait.

If you have any friends in Greece, you might call and ask them how things are working out for them.

Since the Christmas season is actually the period when many stores make their entire yearly profits, except a lot of companies to start revising their profits down, drastically.

With no end in sight, furloughed American workers will start looking for other jobs (if they aren't already) and the official unemployment rate will climb upwards.

Companies that rely on the US Government for business will go through a first round of lay offs just before Christmas and the unemployment rate will climb upwards.

But don't worry, the wealthy seeing the crises have already contacted their investment advisors and money market specialists to divest themselves of American businesses and Cash and move to a safer currency, so they won't be hurt by this. An people who make a living shorting stock are gong to make a killing. They will be rolling in it.

[KentuckyWoman]

12. Social security owns more debt than China

Geezers are not to be triffled with.

[Agnosticsherbet]

14. A revoltuion of old men.

[KentuckyWoman]

15. Indeed. The baricades at WWII memorial was a warning shot

God help the idiots who let it go that far.

[WinkyDink]

9. China will make sure nothing happens. She will send a strong and clear message to Boehner.

[KentuckyWoman]

10. John Boehner turns into a pumpkin

half the Republican party is mad at him for letting Tea Party cause this much trouble. The other half want him gone for failure to get all the brown people out of the country by now.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Very, very, very short term, as in a couple hours, probably not much,

That would be the shock reaction of they actually went there!!!!

then the slow economic unravelling begins. It will get worst as the days proceed

One thing that I can almost bet on is the end of the US Dollar as the reserve currency, and that is something none can predict, Hyperinflation is a real possibility.

Short term, not much though. Medium to long term, well...anybody making actual predictions of actual events beyond meetings of central banks and IMF is just nuts. Nothing like this has happened in 80 years.

[AndrewRN]

16. Thanks Nadin...

I know it won't be the "Zombie Apocalypse" starting right at midnight (I hope!) - was just trying to get a clue on how quickly the world would react to this clusterfuck!

I've heard some experts say that it would take weeks after default before it got REAL bad (i.e. after November 1) when all the beginning-of-the-month payments go out.

Just wondering if the rest of the world would go into a panic and how quickly it would happen.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. The rest of the world is already in a sort of panic

and China is talking de-americanization of the world economy.

You got mail

[kydo]

13. we party like it's 1999

no? probably not.