It actually doesn't matter period, the rest of the world isn't necessary to take into consideration.  Few in the US would notice it were it not for the news running stories on the trivial functions that close.

The shut down is largely a joke.  People seem to be under the impression that the government in it's entirety is just going to grind to a halt, but everything critical is kept separate from what's considered discretionary spending.

Social Security still mails checks, the military still operates, etcetera etcetera.  The only people that are severely hampered are the employees that work for the ancillary functions.  After the last shutdown, they gave them all back pay for sitting on their bums, so it was a free vacation in the end.  Even most of what is cut is proportional funding for state entities.  They only see a temporary drop in revenue with the majority of their funds coming from the state treasury to begin with, assuming it wasn't already block granted in advance.

Politics is really the only thing to discuss, because that's pretty much all a shutdown will be.  One side will blink, probably the Republicans since few of them are actually taking a stand on principle, and things will go back to normal.

It's not a very funny joke for a lot of folks.   As a veteran with a disability, I've seen it that my checks might be affected, though active duty military is covered supposedly.  My job as well is in tied to these games.  I'm not laughing as I don't know how my pay and bills might be affected.

In the US part of the problem is also redistricting/gerrymandering, which is entirely politicians faults. If most everyone in your district is solidly of one party or another, you have little to gain by compromising and much to loose if other politicians from your party say you violated core principles and should be replaced by a more ideologically pure member.

Yeah, stocks probably won't be much affected unless this goes on for a month and the Treasury is depleted and can't pay all of the bills.  There may be hundreds of thousands of individual people who can be very affected if they don't get paid, but it takes a while for that lack of consumer spending power to hurt the economy.  If the shutdown goes long enough to hurt consumer spending power, then the markets will react to the much bigger problem of the US defaulting on bills.  

The English queen (or her representative) fired the entire australian parliament in 1975 for a similar situation. They have not shut down since It's a valid point to discuss if the US should have something similar in place for situations like this. Not necessarily monarchy, but some power able to force elections to start over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis

I know this isn't about the shut down but it does have some relevance. I've always admired other countries because of universal health care and I hope this is our first step towards that. On the other hand I've got neighbors out of work right now so I feel for them.

It takes a while just for people to not get paid.

The government shut down end of day the first of the month.  Anyone on a monthly pay basis doesn't give a fuck that they get a free vacation for however long this lasts unless it actually goes longer than a month.  Even bi-monthly pay basis still gives a solid two weeks before the economy would even notice people not getting paid.

Veterans with disabilities not getting paid is just scare tactics.  The VA is still operating, they aren't even closing hospitals.  Some asshole Senator said they might have to short check or delay payments, as if he had any clue what he was talking about, or any reason to be honest, and the news ran with it.  They've already stated that they have funding through most of the month.  If anyone expects either party to last a month on this, I'd love to hear their reasoning on how a bunch of spineless shits that didn't even go to the wire the last time around are going to survive a month of the media laughing at them.  Thoughts of the media running around to the homes of people that had their legs blown off in Iraq and Afghanistan not getting their disability pay would have them all losing their sanity from sleep deprivation before they hit day zero.

As to the market compensating for government disappearing, this is a misconception of what government does.  Government gets in the way, it does not facilitate.

Government inspects cargo coming into the US, no inspectors means no inspections.  No inspections does not mean no cargo, just that the minute percent of them getting inspected now wont be.  Government inspect food production, no inspections once again just means no inspections.  In this case it's even less useful because government inspections have a bad habit of never actually inspecting until after someone gets sick.  Until someone does, inspections consist of an inspector walking into a factory, looking around briefly, and then leaving.  They don't even swab something to see if the surface of processing equipment is actually being cleaned, or nobody would ever get sick from eating contaminated peanut butter shipments.

Transportation is unaffected.  Customs is still operating all critical services, the FAA is still operating all critical services.  The FDA isn't even shut down, nearly all of the above inspection services are still taking place.  We basically still have a fully functioning government with their fingers involved in far more than the libertarians would like.  Most of what we've lost is access to a bunch of gated parks and federal buildings.

This only poses some kind of problem if it runs a month plus.  If we weren't such an irresponsible society that lived from paycheck to paycheck with all our credit cards maxed, it wouldn't be a problem even then.