How the US contributed to the stock market crash

A banker speaks:

“The whole debate over the debt ceiling sent four negative messages to the markets,” said Ethan Harris, chief North American economist for Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. “That we have a big debt problem, that we can’t fix it because we have a dysfunctional political system, that it’s okay to use the threat of default to achieve political ends, and that there's no safety net if the economy goes into recession because we’re not going to have any more fiscal stimulus.”