In recent years the U.S. government has accustomed global audiences to subpar behaviour, from crippling budget cuts, to debt crises, and most recently a near-universal government shutdown that threatened to turn into debt-default. Although none of these events has been severe enough to push the U.S. economy into another recession, Washington’s policy blunders come not without consequences and beg the question about their real cost to the American economy and the country’s international reputation. Not only has recovery from the 2008-2009 recession been unusually slow, but the government standoff has also put added stress on the country’s economy and garnered a negative watch on U.S. credit rating by Fitch Rating Service last week.

The 16-day halt of government operations itself has taken $24 billion out of U.S. economy, according to Standard and Poor’s, but the buck does not stop there. Although the cost of restarting the government is hard to tabulate precisely, financial experts expected it to reach billions of dollars as it includes interest payments to third parties and additional personnel costs to deal with backlogged work. Workers handling time-sensitive information and procedures, moreover, such as IRS payments and Medicare claims, face additional challenges as leads that have grown cold over the period of the shutdown prevent them from carefully auditing the slew of accumulated claims. Others, like analysts working in the collection of electronic data, will have to check three-week’s worth of information in a faster-than-usual pace, increasing error margins significantly.

Washington’s growing trend of governance-by-crisis, coupled with steep budgetary cuts, has been discouraging businesses from further expansion due to the unstable political climate, and it is estimated to have kept roughly 2 million people out of work. Last-minute decisions, moreover, such as the latest agreement reached by the government to lift the debt ceiling, send the dollar spiralling down rabbit holes where investors are unwilling to tread. The general apprehension created by Washington may have hindered the U.S. economy from shifting into a higher gear, as the brinkmanship of the last few years has also pushed consumer confidence to extremely low levels. But it is not only American businesses and consumers who have been sceptical of the U.S. government’s aggressive approach to its debt problems: The International Monetary Fund has called the U.S. deficit-reduction measures “excessively rapid and ill-designed” in June.

The truth remains that the eleventh-hour deal reached by U.S. government does not resolve the underlying disputes that launched the country-wide paralysis and many fear that the standoff will be repeated again in a few months, when the next deadline approaches in February 2014. Fitch Rating Service, in fact, has warned that the use of the debt ceiling as an extortionist political tool “risks undermining confidence in the role of the U.S. dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the U.S.” and added that the U.S. may deserve to be downgraded from its ‘AAA’ debt rating even if it paid its debts this time, for it can no longer be trusted.