The scariest thing about the government shutdown is the possibility that nobody will notice.
In Spain, when no government could be elected for over a year in an unprecedented political stalemate, the effect of that on the economy was nil. The markets didn’t give a crap. It was happening as I was writing the conclusion to my book, and it was scary to see how fast everything I had been saying in it was coming true.
The smartest thing for politicians to do is to abstain from all of these “I’m going to go away and let’s see how you manage without me” shows. Because increasingly often the answer is “extremely well, thank you.”
Clarissa's Blog 
The federal government doesn’t have anything to do with trash pickup. When that falters, people will notice.
And by markets do you mean stock markets? Because that seems fairly divorced from how the majority of people make most of their money.
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When there’s a recession, we all feel it. In Spain, after years of the crisis, all of a sudden the economy was doing good. Even though it was proving impossible to elect a government for almost a year.
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In one of Mark Blyth’s anti-austerity lectures he compares the performances of economies after 2008… one of the ones that made the most rapid progress was Belgium… which didn’t have a government to do the kind of counter-productive things that governments do in recessions…
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BREAKING NEWS: The shutdown is over!
Trump just signed the funding bill reopening the government, after the Democrats caved in earlier today, and dropped their demand for legislation on DACA.
The Dems were offered the exact same deal on Friday and turned it down, triggering this totally useless three-day farce. 🙂
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It’s not useless. It’s a bargaining strategy. And I’m glad they finally have a strategy.
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