So, is America now a complete laughing stock abroad? I really wonder what non-USian folks think about all this political posturing and willingness to play chicken with the financial reputation of the US.
Granted I am in Scandinavia so they are likely to be more biased but right now they are far, far more concerned with the terrorists reaction when he heard the number of people he murdered, who was buried first, etc, etc, etc.
Just like your idea of 'precisely no risk' of default, what would happen if the programming constant ZERO was only guaranteed to be close to 0? And not really a constant?
We would certainly run a great risk of downgrade (but not of default) if we raise the debt ceiling without making any significant effort to lower our deficit going forward. This seems to be the plan of our politicians, however.