We’ve heard this song before.
With June 1 as the Treasury Department’s deadline, U.S. lawmakers are again up against the wall to make a deal to avoid a catastrophic default on the country’s debt.
Disaster scenarios abound—part of the spectacle of brinksmanship that the public has grown accustomed to in this moment of extreme polarization. The consequences of a debt default would be, as the headlines suggest, “very bad,” says Nancy Kimelman, an assistant teaching professor in economics at Northeastern.
