THANKS, OBAMA

Welp. The federal government has shut down. In a nutshell, that means that the government is no longer allowed to legally spend money. First time in seventeen years that this has happened.

Well... now what? For starters,

• About 800 thousand federal employees will be furloughed (unpaid leave) until the government passes a bill that permits any further spending. 
• Less than 600 of NASA's 18,000 employees will keep working through a shutdown. 
• It will shut down all national parks as well as all Smithsonian museums, costing local businesses about $30 million per day.
• It will shut down a small number of Headstart programs.
• It will reduce GDP (market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time, an indicator of the health of a country's economy) by 1.4 percentage points for the quarter.

And many, many worse things to come. But of course... 

• SENATORS AND CONGRESSPEOPLE (THE PEOPLE WHO GOT US IN THIS MESS) WILL STILL GET PAID.

Even after essentially holding their country's economy hostage to get what they want, they will still get paid an average of $174,000. Despite acting like children and being completely inconsiderate of their constituents, they will still get paid. Even with congressional approval rating at an all-time low of 19% (pre-shut down), it is estimated that House And Senate Incumbent Re-Election Rates Top 90%. So we're likely to see another similar debacle (if not worse) within the next years, probably even months.

It is likely that the United States will suffer yet another credit downgrade, which will only push us back into the miserable pit that was the recession of 2008 that we were slowly (but steadily) crawling out of. This will lead to a further global economic crisis and perhaps even a world-wide depression.

God Help Us All.