Government Shutdown Day 5: No Progress, $1.5 Billion Gone from GDP

The markets are closed, as usual, but not so usual, the federal government is still a dysfunctional mess of political miscalculation on a massive scale.

Costing something on the order of $300 million a day, the five-day closure now amounts to $1.5 billion, and is beginning to infect the private sector, as expected.

As the Chicago Tribune reports, Lockheed Martin announced layoffs of 3000 employees and noted that there could be more to come if the government doesn't get up and running soon.

Not widely reported are defections from the military, with active service men and women refusing to show up for weekend assignments due to the government withholding pay. Republicans in the House offered a bill that would have funded the military, but the Senate would not even consider what some are calling "piecemeal efforts" to keep some of the plates spinning.

In Washington, there were no efforts to reach any kind of compromise or to even discuss getting the federal government back to being a functioning government (truth is, it hasn't been functioning very well for some time now).

The shutdown looks like it will easily extend through the middle of next week and probably into the weekend. With the debt ceiling looming and the government running out of cash, the politicians have done the unthinkable: take themselves out of their own cushy jobs, if only temporarily.

Americans have been polled, and, by a margin of roughly 3-to-1 want the government to get back to work.

Too bad so many don't see the upside.

This has been a special report from Money Daily on the government shutdown. Now, back to football.