Defaultgeddon, the bright side?

With a US default looking increasingly likely in the face of the Tea Party rejecting Operation kill all poors. What are the benefits of this, not for non-millionaires like you but for the politicians who'll be fine whatever happens?

We'll leave endemic corruption aside because apart from "they're being paid to shit on us" what more is there to say?

The reason the Tea Party want a default is fairly simple, they think big government is bad thus they causing it to shut down will be great. They assume the treasury will be forced to maintain debt payments thus everything else will take catastrophic cuts and free market magic will fix everything. Of course if anything goes wrong (and hoo boy will it) all the right wing press and politicians will scream how willing to make a deal they were but Obama just wouldn't be reasonable.

Obama wants a default because while the President will take the blame for a bad economy it looks like the economy is going to be bad whatever. At least this way he'll be able to point to GOP intransigence and the fact he made huge offers of compromise (which he also supports because he really doesn't care about the poor) which might just work. Polling consistently shows the US public hate congress more than the president so having a tangible way to put the blame for the economy on congress would be no bad thing for him.

Democratic congresspeople to my mind have the most to lose, their constituents are going to blame them directly for the loss of vital services and reductions in social security and medicare /medicaid. If there were anything like justice in the world the tea party members of the house who are making default seem ever more likely would be the ones to be punished for that but that is rather a weak reason for Democratic congresspeople to want a default.

Now the big problem with these positive scenarios is that while maybe politically one faction or another may gain somewhat from a default the nation as a whole loses so badly the political loses will be far greater.

For the Tea Party their arguments for small government will be undermined by a recession that may well become a depression. A weak and faltering economy simply will not be able to handle the sudden withdrawal of the direct contribution public funds make to the economy and the indirect contribution public institutions and the spending power of public sector workers bring. I have no idea if the super rich assholes behind the Tea Party will benefit economically or otherwise but in terms of politics the GOP will not be vindicated.

For Obama the ability to blame congress for the economy would be nice but the collapse of US prestige and power after the dollar stops being the reserve currency ( I don't honestly know what will replace it, maybe the Yuan?) will give his opponent in 2012 ample chance to attack him on nationalistic grounds. As will the increased price of borrowing for the US, foreign wars will become even more expensive. Plus presiding over a major economic turmoil doesn't tend to make voters like you much even if they do blame congress.

I don't tend to think Democratic congresspeople have any reason at all to want default so there's little contrast with for them.

I think the Tea Partiers may actually want a default whereas Obama sees some benefits in it for him so as to prevent him caving in completely. Still though, what a silly mess we're in that a wholly artificial accounting process, the debt ceiling, is coming so close to causing a global economic crisis.