It’s always curious to me that negotiators, whether politicians or the opposing sides of sports leagues, so often delay working on an agreement in earnest until they place themselves under severe time constraints, which would seem to be the worst time for those in disagreement to reach a compromise. The reliably lucid James Surowiecki explains why negotiations go bonkers under time pressure, in his article on the debt-ceiling debacle in the New Yorker. 

“You might think that there are benefits to putting negotiators under the gun. But, as the Dutch psychologist Carsten de Dreu has shown, time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call ‘integrative’—taking everyone’s interests and values into account.

In fact, by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism. As the economist Thomas Schelling showed many years ago, ‘It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself’ when it comes to brinksmanship.”

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A dramatic interpretation of the American economy, with Slim Pickens in the role of John Boehner: