An unacceptable hostage situation

'IF I WAS your high school teacher, I would give all of you a D-minus," wrote one commentator in a New York Times blog post yesterday, addressing the US Congress, whose Republican wing came close to forcing a US debt default.

Well said. The shenanigans by a cabal of politicians in Washington over the last 17 days - which held not just the US but the global economy to ransom - were an economically reckless and politically stupid outrage.

Not just Americans, but anybody with any connection to the world economy (which means just about everybody) should be relieved that it didn't happen in the end; that, a…