the debt ceiling is an anachronism

I'm not terribly up on financial stuff--that's for my wife, who translates financial legalese into moreorless general conversation for a living after all--and although I did spend a semester studying economics before receiving my 1st adjunctship, it's something I'm happy to leave to her gentle mercies. but this explanation of the debt ceiling from a recent new yorker comes heavily recommended by her and it's understandable even to a money neophyte like myself. the lesson I come away from it with is that, like most gun deaths, the debt ceiling is something wholly within our political power to eradicate or at least to seriously curb and it's only lack of willingness or, as surowiecki puts it about ceiling talk regressivenenss, because "the republicans seem to be more willing than the democrats to let the country default" (read: "more willing to accept collateral civilian deaths") that our summer has been wasted with this irrelevent topic. as surowiecki also points out, "when some tea partiers said they wouldn't vote to raise the ceiling under any circumstances, they became irrelevant to the conversation." to our shame and discomfort we did not let them remain so.