IS OBAMA'S debt ceiling 'catastrophe' just another scare tactic?

[A] memorandum by Moody’s, one of the three leading credit rating agencies:

We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact.

The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.

In other words, if Moody’s is to be believed, rather than the catastrophe predicted by the politicos, failing to raise the debt limit would be more akin to an accounting inconvenience for the green-eyeshades in the bowels of the Treasury Department.

In other words, yes.