Barely escaping the calamity of a debt default, a humbled United States yesterday reluctantly set itself on a new austerity course amid still poisonous clouds of uncertainty about where the cuts in spending would come.
Moments after a deal on raising the debt ceiling and launching a programme of cuts in the deficit overcame a final hurdle on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama stepped into the White House Rose Garden to acknowledge that the recent weeks of brinkmanship in Washington had already damaged a weak economic recovery.
"It was something that we could have avoided entirely," he said, agreeing that "dysfunctional government" was unacceptable to voters. "It should not take the risk of default, the risk of economic catastrophe" to get politicians to do their jobs, he said.
In the same breath, however, he set the stage for further clashes with a vow to ensure that a second round of cuts envisaged by the deal includes increases in some tax rates.
Obama forsook the usual public ceremony to sign the new law, which contained elements sufficient to offend just about everyone in Washington but did have the merit of preventing a default by the world's biggest economy which might have set off a new global recession.
