US Treasury Macroeconomic Report Everyone Should Read

Here's the quiz:  where did these words come from?  Gold bugs, anarchists, scare-mongers, preppers, chicken little bloggers, right-wing nuts?  Guess again.
Bold-face emphasis is mine.

Introduction
The United States has never defaulted on its
obligations, and the U. S. dollar and Treasury
securities are at the center of the international
financial system. A default would be
unprecedented and has the potential to be
catastrophic: credit markets could freeze, the
value of the dollar could plummet, U.S.
interest rates could skyrocket, the negative
spillovers could reverberate around the world,
and there might be a financial crisis and
recession that could echo the events of 2008
or worse.


Conclusion
If market
participants were to lose confidence in the
United States’ willingness to repay its debts,
the adverse effects seen in 2011 could
reappear, and even push up yields on Treasury
securities. Such a rise in Treasury yields
would also raise the cost of financing the
government’s debt and worsen the fiscal
position of the government.
In the event that a debt limit impasse were to
lead to a default, it could have a catastrophic
effect on not just financial markets but also
on job creation, consumer spending and
economic growth—with many private-sector
analysts believing that it would lead to events
of the magnitude of late 2008 or worse, and
the result then was a recession more severe
than any seen since the Great Depression.
Considering the experience of countries
around that world that have defaulted on their
debt, not only might the economic
consequences of default be profound, those
consequences, including high interest rates,
reduced investment, higher debt payments,
and slow economic growth, could last for
more than a generation.

Here's your answer to who authored this report to Congress:  the US Treasury.  The report was summarily ignored by Congress.  Markets won't.

https://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/Report-on-Macroeconomic-Effect-of-Debt-Ceiling-Brinkmanship.aspx

GOT GOLD?