World Tells Us What It Really Thinks About Our 'Absurd' Debt Crisis

"Laughingstock," "political insanity," "absurd theatrics," and more

News outlets today, no doubt exhausted from aggregating the reactions of angry American pushed over the edge with aggravation over the debt ceiling debate, have now turned to aggregating the angry reactions of the world at large. Things don't look great from inside the country; it turns out they don't look that great from outside, either. Consider the commentary from abroad:

The UK: "Even by the notoriously fractious standards of Capitol Hill, the high-stakes game of brinkmanship playing out over the debt crisis has looked like a political system gone mad," indicates an editorial in the Telegraph. "[I]nternational confidence in America’s ability to resolve its problems has fallen to an all-time low... Two centuries of accumulated advantage risk being squandered in a few months of political insanity." And Richard Adams at Guardian adds: [A]ppeals to common sense are of little use..."

Germany:  “What America is currently exhibiting is the worst kind of absurd theatrics and the whole world is being held hostage… Most importantly, the Republicans have turned a dispute over a technicality into a religious war, which no longer has any relation to a reasonable dispute between the elected government and the opposition,” writes the German mass-circulation Bild, (via Think Progress).

France:  "The American politicians supposed to lead the most powerful nation in the world are becoming a laughing stock,” -- notes Le Monde (via Think Progress).

Russia: "[B]itterly partisan," described The Moscow Times, quoting one anonymous investor as saying ""if the U.S. debt situation is not solved we are all screwed — there will be no winners and losers."

Europe, generally: “One could now ask why is the U.S. debt treated any better than a country like Portugal, which has about the same levels of deficit and debt,” said a senior European policymaker to the Times, on condition of anonymity.

China: We've discussed how China's state run media has been heckling us over the debt ceiling. In short, as The New York Times reports, Xinhua said the “irresponsible” brinksmanship in Washington risked “strangling the still fragile economic recovery of not only the United States but also the world as a whole.”

India: "An acrimonious stalemate, with both sides offering competing plans that are unlikely to win bipartisan support" describes the Times of India.