There are serious financial and economic dangers in the game of chicken Congress and the President are playing over raising the debt limit, but downgrades by the ratings agencies are not among them. Sure, it sounds ominous: If Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on a deal for at least $4 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years, …

There’s an important distinction sometimes lost in the current debate over raising the debt ceiling. On Aug. 2 (or thereabouts), the U.S. government is not going to default on its credit obligations, not just yet anyway. If the borrowing limit isn’t increased, the Treasury Department is going to start taking some very unpleasant …

At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Obama spokesman Jay Carney was asked whether the President might circumvent the tortured efforts to strike a debt-ceiling deal with Republicans and invoke the U.S. Constitution’s 14th amendment, which contains a clause providing that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, …