Josh Barro, Columnist

Will Obama Ruin the Economy to Ruin the Republicans?

January 14, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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With both the 14th Amendment and platinum coin options to defuse a debt-limitcrisis (apparently) off the table, only two possible outcomes are left: a debt-ceiling increase or the government's missing required payments and economicchaos ensuing. This is exactly the choice President Barack Obama laid out in hisnews conference this morning.

Politico reported today that top Republican staff members believe “more thanhalf” their conference is prepared to push the government into default on somepayments rather than cave on their demands for further spending cuts.