Washington Is Annoyed at Wall Street’s Failure to Panic

Reporter says Washington can’t figure it out.

I just got off the phone with a source on Capitol Hill who has spent the past few days trying to convince Republicans to vote for a debt ceiling hike.

He told me that the biggest obstacle he faces has been “market complacency.”

“Frankly, a bit of panic would be very helpful right now,” he said.

As he explained it, lots of people in Washington, D.C. expected that this would be a week marked by panic in the markets. Stocks would tank. Bonds would get clobbered. The dollar would do something dramatic. And all of this would help convince reluctant lawmakers that they had to reach a compromise on the debt ceiling.

“We were following the script from 2008. When the market collapsed after TARP failed, that spooked everyone enough to get them to fall in line. We thought the same thing would happen this week,” he said.

Instead, the market has just been on a quiet, non-panicked slide.

Stocks have sold off by a couple of percentage points, but nothing that indicates a real fear trade in the works.

Everyone in D.C. has a theory about this. Some believe the market is sending a message that a deal will get done. Others think the market doesn’t understand politics.