As a game of chicken plays out in Washington, DC, over whether to raise the limit on US government borrowing to avoid a default on its debt, the one thing that experts agree on is that a default would be catastrophic.
The United States hit its borrowing limit on January 19. Since then, the US Treasury has implemented a number of measures to avoid a default, but it is only a matter of days, or weeks at most, before those are exhausted and the US government is unable to pay what it owes.
