Lessons for the Next Debt Fight

'Debtmageddon' ended not with a financially cataclysmic bang, but with a classic beltway whimper, sounding like a political football being punted. Faced with a fiscal Gordian knot, the nation's leaders banked the cuts they could agree on and pushed the intractable problems to a congressional 'super committee.' While we wait for that skirmish, here are five lessons from this one