America flirts with self-destruction (Martin Wolf, Financial Times)

[MBS]

1. excellent article

concluding paragraph (excerpted below) is also good:

So what should the administration do? In a democracy, people overturn laws by winning elections,
not by threatening the closure of government or even an outright default. It is impossible to run the
government of a serious country under blackmail threats of this kind. Every time the
administration gives in, it stores up more difficulty for itself. It has to stop doing so . . .
Playing chicken with credibly reckless people is always scary. But the administration cannot give
in. I remain, like Winston Churchill, optimistic: the US will do the right thing in the end, though
not before first exhausting all the alternatives.