If conversations between american president and to Republicans Congress did not come to an agreement, and Washington was eventually forced to suspension of paymentsAmericans will quickly feel the blow. They will understand because retirees will not be able to collect their pensions, they will see their assets depreciate because the stock markets will fall, and in a few days the lack of payments from the federal government will hit the finances of doctors, hospitals, but also jobs across the country. .

If Washington does run out of cash, it will be forced to keep paying US Treasury bonds, which are the backbone of the global financial system. However, if he fails to make any of those payments, it will trigger a crash of historic proportions on Wall Street that, according to Mark Zady, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, “would be a catastrophic disaster.” Even if the Treasury pays bondholders on time, as most observers believe, the political tug-of-war that led to the debt ceiling crisis will undermine confidence in the superpower’s economic prospects and the value of everything Americans own, from home values ​​to pensions and stocks. “Everything will fall,” Zadi emphasizes, adding: “Stocks, commercial real estate, housing prices, everything will fall.”

The first in line for lack of money will be doctors’ offices, hospitals and insurance companies. On June 1, when cash is expected to run out, the U.S. state is due to pay about $47 billion in Medicare public health benefits for older Americans, according to the Center for Bipartisan Research. And since Medicare funds about 1/5th of American health care, some doctors won’t have the money to pay their staff and pay bills. Eventually, they will have to make tough decisions when planning surgeries, tests, and treatments because they won’t have the funds to cover the costs. Commenting on this, Trisha Neumann, Health Policy Specialist at the KFF Research Group, “The longer this goes on, the more problems it will create.”

US government contractors will go unpaid, including with contracts for defense equipment.

In the event of a default on June 2, approximately 25% of the country’s pensioners will see their pensions not credited to their accounts, as the required amounts of $25 billion will not be paid. And, of course, US government contractors, including those with defense contracts equipment, of which $1 billion is due on June 2. After all, on June 9, 2 million civil servants will be paid, as well as schools, but payments of one billion dollars will not be paid, and people will constantly check bank accounts to see if the amounts remain. unchanged or decreased, while Wall Street will constantly think about it, as concerns about the country’s solvency and credibility can undermine the value of savings.

And that is not all. As a direct consequence of the default, interest rates will rise and it will be harder for Americans to buy a house or car or even borrow money to start a business. And, according to Zadi, shocks will occur within a few days that will send the economy into recession. As for the mass layoffs that usually accompany a recession, they will occur a few weeks after the default. And of course, what will happen immediately is the absence of several hundred billion dollars of government spending in the economy.