Commentary 
With the acknowledged national debt now a politically and economically unpayable $30 trillion (in reality, its unfunded liabilities are far greater), Americans should start to become acclimated to the realities of the United States’ eventual, inevitable default. While it may seem unfathomable, and the results too catastrophic to imagine, in fact, the likely damage to everyday Americans would be minimal in the short term and unquestionably a net plus in the long term.
This is far from surprising and not a new problem. As Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff detail in their comprehensive review of the subject, history shows that great powers defaulting on their debts was long the rule, not the exception, and that the long-term implications of various regimes’ repudiations of their external debts in particular were minimal or a net plus, depending on the circumstances….