A default would be a silly thing on a national scale. You'd essentially reset your debt and piss off a lot of foreign powers, but the economy would continue working as before, since you'd immediately print a whole bunch of new (virtual) money. Chances are a great deal of countries will just go along with it to not grind their own economies into pieces when they suddenly can't buy/sell from/to the US any more.
This is assuming you never get to the stage of hyperinflation, but you can probably just print a whole bunch of new physical currency as well.
I have a few degrees in economics. You have absolutely zero idea what you're talking about if you think a US default would have the economy "continue working as before". A US default would make the 08 financial crisis look like a lemonade stand going out of business. This way of thinking is so dangerous because you people don't know what you don't know. Musk and the tech bros are playing Russian roulette with all of our livelihoods.
Yeah, parent comment is scary - glad you called it out. Although I don't have an economics degree, I do a lot of bond future trading on the side and am in fairly good tune with the bond market/how their yields work. The effect on the bond yields alone if the US defaulted would be disastrous.
“I have a few degrees in economics” is an appeal to authority, and a laughable one at that. Economists are historians that tricked themselves into thinking that overfitted models of the past predict the future.
2008 was obvious in retrospect but the government that is full of economists did nothing to stop it. They lauded things like Clinton getting the govt to back housing loans because there is “a school” of economics that claims that’s better than the “other school” of economics that is focused on the moral hazard.
This is assuming you never get to the stage of hyperinflation, but you can probably just print a whole bunch of new physical currency as well.