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“If it were to occur -- and it’s a big if -- one would expect a series of legal triggers, potentially transmitting the default to many other markets,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest fixed-income manager....

If we miss an interest payment, that would blow Lehman out of the water,” said Tim Bitsberger, a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush and now a New York-based managing director at BNP Paribas SA. “Lehman was an isolated company, and now we are talking about the U.S. government.”

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman urged employees to contact their congressmen to remind them about the “unacceptable consequences” of a default.

“It should be like nuclear bombs, basically too horrible to use,” Buffett, said in an interview published by Fortune magazine last week.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is preparing to make campaign donations to Republicans that vote to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, putting it at loggerheads with the Tea Party....

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), last month came forward with a large number of Wall St. CEOS against the shutdown and expressed fears that failure to raise the debt ceiling could do substantial economic damage. An AP article published last week said, “concerned, the Chamber of Commerce is preparing to participate in political primaries, protecting friendly lawmakers from conservative challengers.” The Chamber wrote me to say that it doesn’t select candidates based on any single issue.

A default would trigger an acute worldwide financial crisis by undermining confidence in U.S. Treasury Bills. Congressional Republicans are refusing to raise it unless a list of demands is met - several of which have nothing to do with spending or debt and are more political in nature.

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Top Wall Street executives are warning that any effort to pay interest on U.S. debt before other obligations such as Social Security, a strategy some lawmakers think would placate bond investors if the government breaches its borrowing limit, would pose severe risks to financial markets and the economy....

The Wall Street pushback against an idea backed by the House GOP is part of an effort to force a resolution on raising the nation’s borrowing limit, which the Treasury has said it expects to reach by mid-October.

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