If you think that the economic problems of Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal or Spain are terrifying, then think again. The US is heading for default because the Republicans won’t agree to raise the debt ceiling. Here’s an extract from Paul Krugman’s latest NYT column.

Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.

As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals.

Put it this way: If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.

Beyond that, voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P.

A section of the letter Rebekah Wade (as she then was) sent to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in 2009. I particularly like the bit where she states her belief that the Guardian coverage “has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”.

Mrs Brooks, by the way, is (or, should I say was?) David Cameron’s riding-out companion.

Just about the only truly memorable phrase uttered by Edward Heath, the Tory Prime Minister in the 1970s, was his description of Tiny Rowland, the boss of Lonhro (who also, for a time, owned the Observer) as “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. (Rowland famously replied that he would not want to be its acceptable face, which was quite a good riposte.) But Tiny has long since passed to his reward. The Digger and his spawn are proving worthy inheritors of his title.

As I write, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt is wriggling on an exquisitely sharp hook. He has to find a way of stopping the Digger’s take-over of BSkyB without triggering a very expensive lawsuit from News Corporation. It may be simpler than he thinks. Apart altogether from the question of whether anyone involved with the Digger is a “fit and proper” person to run a broadcasting company, there is the fact that his decision to approve the BSkYB takeover was apparently based entirely on “assurances” received from News Corp about what would happen to Sky News. Given what we now know about the way News International has concealed information from the police, misled Parliament and possible obstructed the course of justice, Hunt could easily — and plausibly — maintain that no assurances from such a source can be taken seriously.