If your conclusions are anywhere near the field of economy, politics and finance, you’re quite right. But if you think it’s about flights being cancelled or Disney world being sued, I’m sorry, you’re terribly wrong.
What basically happened is a fight between the two houses of the congress in the US government because they didn’t agree upon a new budget. Well, that’s typically the pocket money of the government. That wasn’t accepted by both and since it was going nowhere and things began to seem bad, the government entered a *partial* shutdown on October 1, 2013.
Over 7 lakh employees are currently on an unpaid leave and they don’t even know if they would get the back pay once the situation comes to a close.
It’s the first shutdown in 17 years.
This however doesn’t put a period to the functioning of the important organs of US. The military shall continue to get funds as planned and education funds shall be distributed as the same. The postal service, Federal Reserve and the courts shall not even see a little fallback.
The museums, zoos and national parks (Including the lady with the torch – Statue of liberty) shall be shutdown during this period.
The 17th of October (today) is the deadline for extending the government’s borrowing limit. On that date, the US governments can borrow money to pay its bills, hence calling it debt ceiling. But even this faces a hurdle as the House Republicans have also demanded a series of policy concessions - including on the president's health law and on financial and environmental regulations - in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
This has affected a lot of companies those which include the famous chain of supermarkets, Wal-Mart, the flight company Boeing and famous banking companies like Bank of America and Citigroup.
To see a very detailed list of how the government has been wounded by this, kindly follow this link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24302508
Maybe not earlier but the Economy is taking a very hard hit as time progresses. The economic interests of US are widely based across everywhere in the world. Its Asian economic interests faced hurdles when Obama decided to not attend the meetings at all. And moreover it has also affected the negotiations with the European Union regarding the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is taking a serious hit. However it is expected to resume soon enough.
As time progresses and the issue taking even serious stages as it proceeds to the debt ceiling date has put all the government officials to walk on a hot frying pan with the entire world media watching it.
This has currently not caused a major effect on the various issues across the globe. But it has just begun. The US government, the officials within and the millions of people who live under its rule wait for this situation to come to a close as soon as possible. Nothing definitive has occurred yet.