Reply #3: I agree...some people on DU have rather odd ideas about this

[alcibiades_mystery]

They say either

1. The current market doesn't show panic; therefore, default is unlikely. This is putting altogether too much faith in the predictive power of the market. The current situation is extremely uncertain, and I'm not sure people would even know how to manage the risk on this. Waiting for the market to tell us what will happen is not the best strategy in this case.

2. The "big money guys" will swoop in and force payment. This assumes that the "big money guys" (whoever they are) either a. don't want to see a default, and b. have control of the fringe Republicans forcing this showdown in the House. I haven't found any of these arguments particularly convincing, and they both amount to a kind of magical thinking. It's not clear that the Teabaggers will respond to the "elites" they've invented in their utterly incoherent ideology.

So, I think you're right. Relying on either 1 or 2 as predictors or saving graces is quite silly at this point. We really are in a crisis mode now.