China and Japan warned the United States to keep an eye on its financial standing in the wake of the government shutdown that began last week.
According to the Financial Times, two officials from the White House's economic sector said on Monday that President Barack Obama had no plans to end the stand-off with Republicans in Congress, ramping up anxieties in Washington that the threat of a default would increase if the debt ceiling limit was reached on October 17 with no concession from either the Democrats or the GOP.
This ramped up international worries as well, especially since the global market has seen a dip since the beginning of the shutdown. The FTSE All-World Equity index dropped about .5 percent, while the Dow fell an overall .6 percent.
Beijing responded by saying that "the clock is ticking," pushing politicians on Capitol Hill to make a decision on the budget before the fast-approaching debt ceiling deadline creeps up, in hopes that the "safety of the Chinese investments," remain intact.
Vice-finance minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters at a news conference that China hasn't parsed words over its dissatisfaction with the political blockage in the United States capitol.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance in Japan also expressed some unease over the possibility of an issue with currency markets, a senior official told the Financial Times. If the United States dollar defaulted, investors might have to abandon the dollar completely, putting more pressure on the yen to shoot up. A government official in Tokyo said he was "very confident" that if something like that did happen, there could be another solution to help soften the blow.
"We hope that the US can draw lessons from history," Zhu told the press. "As the world's largest economy and an issuer of the world's major reserve currency, it is important that the U.S. take credible steps to address its dispute over the debt ceiling in a timely fashion and avoid a default."
