The Economic Impacts of a Short Payment Delay

CDS is tricky because it only pays out if the treasury actually fails to make a payment on interest or principal. I think that equity volatility is probably the thing that you can count on more than some of these other tail risks. A delay of any more than a few days could be really damaging and pull a lot of money out of the economy. The bigger effect, even then the direct hit, could just be the fact that financial markets would react strongly and negatively.