Web Wealth: Federal debt

Why care about the federal debt ceiling? These sites tell how we are knocking our heads against it while the fate of our economy seems to hinge on extending the government's ability to borrow.

Dire predictions. Huffington Post blogger Mandy Jenkins says the stock market will take a dive, business and consumer lending will stop, military pay is delayed or halted and you won't be able to "buy stuff."

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Hitting home. CNN Money says the big impact for individuals and families is that "it would upset interest rates and the value of the dollar," thus raising costs for mortgage and car loans, delays in infrastructure repairs, job losses, and reduced benefits.

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How we got here. A 2009 video about an imaginary Florida community called "United States," which ran up a huge debt it seemed unlikely to be able to repay, is the conservative Heritage Foundation's way of explaining the crisis facing the country. What the people of United States did to solve the problem was to elect a tough new leader to turn things around.

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Small business worry. Uncertainty is the big issue for small business. The post at the Small Business Majority blog says, "the closer the nation gets to that August deadline, the more economic uncertainty is created, and in this instance that uncertainty has real consequences for small business owners" coming off the long recession. "It won't take much to kick that confidence out from underneath us," writer John Arensmeyer quotes a Maryland business operator as saying.

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Following the votes. Blow-by-blow coverage of what's happening in Washington is available at TheHill.com, a political journal whose bread and butter is the infighting, name calling and cajoling over issues among the outsize personalities in the nation's capitol.

http://thehill.com

Contact staff writer Reid Kanaley at 215-854-5114, rkanaley@phillynews.com or @ReidKan on Twitter. Read previous Web Wealth columns at www.philly.com/webwealth.