For all the drama surrounding today's political drama (which came and went largely unnoticed by a stock market hypnotized by the Federal Reserve), the bottom line is that the key impact of last night's historic government shutdown has been nothing more (or less) than the temporary unpaid leave of absence, i.e. furloughs (with all accrued, owed payments promptly being remitted once the government is unhalted) of some 815,932 civilian government workers, out of a total of 2 million, or a 41% furlough rate.

 

As the WSJ tabulates "some agencies, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are seeing all but a handful of their employees go home without pay. Others, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, kept the vast majority of their workers on the job. Certain divisions of government, such as the U.S. Postal Service and the Federal Reserve, don’t operate under the normal appropriations process and their staffing remained unaffected." Then again one wonders: with 91% of the IRS' total 94,516 workers stuck at home, downloading porn, is the government shutdown really such an evil outcome?