Defaults, advanced degrees, and saying neener, neener, neener to China.

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If you decide to not pay your bills, it depends on the bills you don't pay as to what will happen. Don't pay your utility bills and the utility gets cut off. Don't pay other bills and creditors will come after you. Possibly they will take you to Small Claims court. Depending on whom you owe money to, they may even take you into an alley for a conference involving repeated blows to your knees.

Don't be hating red ink.

Repossession is also a very real possibility.

But all that is at the private level. What about in the public sector? By that I mean the government.

What will happen, really, if the United States quits paying on the money it has borrowed, mostly from China?

In truth, no one really knows. Economists make predictions and forecasts. But they are basing this on semi-educated guesses and what has happened in other countries which defaulted on national debts.

Anyone can make a WAG and say it is authoritative, based on the amount of education they have. It's still a WAG.

As for a nation saying "Hey. We ain't gonna pay you no more, neener, neener, neener," all those are pretty much third world countries with a Gross Domestic Product composed largely of violence

Got one for you too

perpetrated by angry young men with full automatic weapons who are fighting slightly older men who were once angry young men with full automatic weapons. The economies in those countries can't tank because, aside from the unchanging price of ammo at Mohammed's Discount Military Supplies, there is no economy.

So what will happen if the US defaults on the debt?

I say let's find out. Quit paying on the debt.

This may mean the US will not be able to borrow any more money, unless it goes to the international version of a loan shark. Loans from Li Ching Achmed's Personal Government Finance Emporium will probably carry a 25 percent interest rate, compounded every time time a member of Congress says something stupid or opens his mouth, which is really the same thing.

Your neighborhood loan company.

Of course even Achmed may be too much of an astute businessman to float a loan to the US. In that case, no more borrowing.

I like it.

Some people are asking why the US can't just print more money to solve the money crunch. The short answer is because the American public likes to buy a loaf of bread for less than $5 a slice. The long answer amounts to the same thing, but you need an advanced degree in Economics And Other Ways To Not Know Anything But Still Be Respected And Paid For Offering Opinions to fully misunderstand.

However, they are making sense in one area.

The economists are predicting serious pain for the US if the nation defaults on the debt.

At the corner of Idiot Road and Stewpid Street.

The economists are predicting serious pain for the US if the nation doesn't get the budget under control.

The economists are predicting serious pain for the US before things return to what is typically called normal.

While I have about as much respect for the average economist as I do an armadillo, I have to agree here - Serious pain for the US is coming. The question is when.

Our current Borrower in Chief. Stop. Stop stop stop stop.

Lemme point out here. The nation's Chief Co-Signer when he served in the Sinate voted AGAINST raising the debt ceiling, saying it was a failure of leadership which led to that necessity.

Um. Someone wanna reconcile THAT and his present position and do it intelligently and rationally?

If the truth hurts, yer living wrong.

I'm listening. I seriously want to know. I'm tempted to list names of people who voted for him (and I did in the first draft), but I'm not going to do that. I'm right and they are wrong. Nuf said.

Anyway, our current Borrower in Chief is only delaying the pain when he wants to borrow more money.

Myself? I say get the pain over with now.

I also say, let's default and REALLY see what happens.

Will China come and repossess Congress? We can only hope.

Come and get 'em.