In January, the US federal government reached the debt ceiling previously set by Congress, and is now using extraordinary measures to meet its public spending obligations. The Initiative on Global Markets Forum at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business invited a panel of US experts to give their thoughts on what a US debt default would mean for financial markets, employment, and what the need periodically to increase the debt ceiling means for overall US debt. The author writes that the survey shows that expert economists are concerned that a debt default could damage financial markets but are less certain about the impact on employment. [….]