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Esme's Blog: Compromise Is A Dirty Word

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- As politicians in Washington D.C. fight like children in a sandbox that is too small, the nation waits for a deal that will avoid a national default.

With default would come a downgrade by the nation's credit rating agencies, and with that higher interest rates on that national debt. There will also be rising interest rates for consumers that will affect everything from car loans, credit cards and adjustable rate mortgages.

This, at a time when the latest data shows the economy grew at just 1.9 percent in the last quarter and unemployment sits at more than 9 percent.

Then of course there is the stock market, which has declined six days in a row but so far has avoided a total meltdown. Are millions of investors, large and small, facing losses like the ones we saw when the market crashed in the fall of 2008? We'll see.

A lot depends on those children in the sandbox in Washington D.C. Whatever their beliefs, it is baffling that their seems to be no move to compromise merely for the sake of  avoiding additional, staggering financial pain on millions of Americans.

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