The Danger In Playing “Debt Ceiling Chicken”: $440 Billion In Debt Maturing Before November 15 !

• The Danger In Playing “Debt Ceiling Chicken”: $440 Billion In Debt Maturing Before November 15! 
  by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com 
  With everyone’s attention turning to the debt ceiling X-Date of October 17 (or sooner now that the Pentagon is once again spending money like a drunken sailor following the recall of 400,000 workers or half of the total number fuloughed), some are wondering why is the stock market not reacting more violently. The generic response that has formed is that despite all the feamongering by Obama and the Treasury, even crossing the X-Date will hardly result in the apocalyptic outcome that so many predict as the Treasury can “prioritze payments”, i.e., paying some bills and not others, which as we explained before, means paying down debt obligations first, and everything else – whose non-payment does not constitute an event of default under US debt – last. In other words, if the US were to merely live within its means, it should have no problem remaining current on its interest expense even if that means slashing most other government programs.
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  While superficially this is correct, there is one issue that few are discussing, namely the mountain of short-term debt maturities between October 24 and November 15, which if unable to be rolled over – something that would hardly be able to happen in a time of quasi-technical default – would imply redemption and maturity of the debt without a subsequent rolling over.
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  The chart below lay outs the amount of Bill, Note and Bond maturities between October 18 and November 15: it totals a whopping $441 billion.
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