Introduction

The US government's deadline to raise its debt ceiling could be here sooner than expected. That pulls forward the risk of a debt default that could ripple through global financial markets. A delay of any more than a few days could be really damaging because you would just pull a lot of money out of the economy. The last time that we got into real serious trouble around the debt limit was in 2011 and then in 2013, where ultimately Congress raised the debt limit only essentially a day before the deadline.