Whose faith? Whose credit?

“The full faith and credit of the United States.”

It’s an awesome notion, one that has changed the world and made contemporary international finance and trade possible: a currency so reliable, so respected, that a promise based on the dollar is as good as gold—even though it’s no longer tethered to gold or any other tangible materiel. That faith and that credit is what’s at stake in the as-yet-unresolved debt ceiling battle being waged by the philosophically riven House. A manufactured crisis such as this is a product of political dysfunction of historic and dangerous proportions.

The current debate has been couched in domestic budgetary terms, reflecting the largely myopic and uninformed outlook of the controlling sect of House Republicans. But what’s at stake is even greater than the catastrophic impact a default would have on the scores of millions of Americans who rely on numberless forms of government support: from pay for the armed forces and government workers to support for veterans and those on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP—you name it—to all those who live on their IRAs and 401(k)s whose hard-earned savings will shrink along with the stock market. But there’s something more.

Pound displaced; dollar to follow?