Dear Congress: You kinda suck. And you’re negatively affecting the economy, just by being there.

From a client:

All of this debt ceiling nonsense has me a little freaked out that no matter what those fools in Washington wind up doing, the interest rates on mortgages are going to climb and I fear they will climb a lot by next spring…

I know I’m not alone in having unsettled clients thanks to Congress’ incompetence.

The short answer is that no one has any idea what’s going to happen – the politicians seem more interested in brinkmanship and one-upping each other in an interminable game of us-v-them and not realizing that their (in)decisions have significant impacts on real people. 

The M Report says:

Not everyone agrees about the potential for a debt default, but economists and analysts across the board say the scenario would trigger sharp increases in one- and five-year Treasury yields, forcing mortgage rates to soar and break up a still-brittle housing recovery.

“Do I think the [U.S.] will default on [its] debt? No. But if they don’t start making substantial progress soon we should look for interest rates to start to moving higher,” a Bankrate article reports Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans, as saying. “And that could happen before Aug. 2.”

Hat tip: Varbuzz