"Defaulting on our debts could spark a worldwide financial meltdown."
 | By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion |
Hillary Clinton is well-known for her determination and for her years of experience. Maybe she should also be known for being pretty good at bluffing. |
Bluffing is part of the job, it seems, when one is secretary of state, particularly when members of Congress are threatening to renege on paying your country's debts, which in turn threatens not only the domestic economy but the global order. |
In a guest essay today, Clinton describes her behind-the-scenes maneuvering during this crisis in 2011, relating how she tried to reassure anxious foreign diplomats that Congress would reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling. "I repeated a quip sometimes apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill: You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after we've tried everything else," she writes. "Privately, I crossed my fingers and hoped it was true." Congress reached a deal just in time. |
Twelve years later, Congress's threats to refuse to raise the debt ceiling have returned — except this time, the dangers of such political posturing are even graver than they were back then. |
Clinton notes that we've rarely needed the trust of the world as much as we do right now. "Today America's credibility will help determine whether nervous Europeans continue to stand with us and support Ukraine or seek an accommodation with an emboldened Russia," she writes. Reneging on America's debts could also imperil the dollar's strength in the global economy. By "undermining America's credibility and the pre-eminence of the dollar, the fight over the debt ceiling plays right into the hands of Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia." |
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