The Recent US Government Shutdown: Bad For the Global Economy?

Despite the “political fallout” of the recent US government shutdown largely confined within its own boarders, was this bone-headed move by the GOP really bad for the global economy? 

By: Ringo Bones 

The cause may be just a “mere” disagreement by the Tea Party leaning members of the US Republican Party over President Obama’s flagship healthcare, but the reasons behind the disagreement seems to read like the salient points of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf being shoehorned to the US Republican Party’s “interpretation” of the Christian Bible has cost the US economy 24 billion US dollars – or 0.6 percent of US GDP wiped out - in the 16-day government shutdown. But will a repeat of such a “political tantrum” – which will be due in January 14, 2014 – spell the death knell of the global economy? 

Reputational damage to the US government and of the US economy – from the perspective of the rest of the world – is quite considerable over the Tea Party leaning members of the US Republican Party resorting to manufacture a crisis in order to protect their vain political interests. Even Mainland China – who owns trillions of dollars of American Treasury Bills largely used by the Bush administration to fund its “War on Terror” during the first decade of the 21^st Century – now calls for the global economic community to restructure the way they do business that’s decoupled from America’s recent politically triggered economic uncertainty. The last time the US Republican Party pulled such a prolonged shutdown was back in 1995 where a 21-day shutdown cost the US economy 1.5 billion US dollars. 

Can the global economy survive another political temper tantrum from the ultra right wing branch of the US Republican Party? The world’s leading tenured economists may shudder at the prospect, and unless the most radical right-wing members of the US Republican Party are voted out of Capitol Hill this upcoming mid-term elections in November 2014, the global economy might not survive another political temper tantrum from radical right-wingers who insisted that white Anglo Saxon Jesus didn’t miraculously cured the sick for free. I think things are worse that what Vanessa Williamson had been pointing out in The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.