Neil Irwin explains why Wall Street hasn’t tanked today:
First, global investors clearly aren’t viewing this as an end-of-the-world doomsday scenario that they did in 2008 when the House rejected the bank bailout bill in 2008 on its first pass (that day, the stock market fell 8 percent). That will likely change if it starts to look like the nation is not only going over the fiscal cliff, but poised to stay there. It could also change if the brinksmanship shifts from the relatively manageable risk of an austerity-induced recession toward the more existential one of a debt ceiling showdown and possibility of a U.S. government default.
