This scene from The Newsroom Season 1 Episode 8 – “The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn” is a great illustration of the lunacy of the debt ceiling debate.
SLOAN: “I just got off the phone with these guys. Listen to these quotes. These aren’t from liberals. These are hard-core Wall Street guys who, whatever the world may think of them, know what they’re talking about and so do I. Jamie Dimon at Chase says, ‘Voting against raising the debt ceiling would be a moral disaster.’ The Barclays guys say, ‘This debate is detached from reality.’ My Goldman source says, ‘If the House Republicans continue this debate, I hope they’re willing to mark the end of the dollar as a global reserve currency.’ Please notice that he didn’t say ‘if the House Republicans don’t raise the debt ceiling.’ He said ‘if the House Republicans continue this debate.’ That’s all it takes. Just the uncertainty. That’s why the Dow’s gonna close down 230 points today. Because just the debate, just the doubt, just the possibility that the House Majority might commit the most self-inflicted damage to the country since the secession of the South has caused billions in value to disappear.”
MACKENZIE: “Sloan, I understand. I swear to God I do. But you can’t say the same thing in the C-block?”
SLOAN: “Don’t pretend you don’t know that most people watch 10 minutes of news. The first 10 minutes.”
MACKENZIE: “The vote isn’t until tomorrow night. And it’s only the first vote. You said yourself it was cosmetic. Why do we have to feature it tonight?”
SLOAN: “We should have been featuring it weeks ago. We should have been leading with it every night–”
MACKENZIE: “Why do we have to feature it tonight?”
SLOAN: “To give time for the people to call their congressmen and say, ‘If you fuck with the full faith and credit of the US Treasury, you’re fired.’ To give time for the people to jam the phone lines of the district offices. To give the people time to say, ‘I’m a fiscal conservative and you’ve got to put the pin back in the grenade right now.'”
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