"Armageddon" isn't an exaggeration of what it would be like for the U.S. government to truly default on its debt. I'm hardly a financial sage, but I can safely predict that trillion-dollar bailouts are going to run into something of a brick wall. You can't keep allocating that kind of money without doing something extraordinary, like cranking up taxes, deleting the Department of Defense, printing money like it's Zimbabwe (i.e., hyperinflation), or whatever else. Since none of those steps are in the slightest bit palatable, the only other solution is to let things run their course. That could mean a recession or maybe we get lucky and have a recovery of some sort.

The collapse of oil prices has dropped gas costs in a huge way, which will have a variety of positive effects on the U.S. economy. For oil states (or wind farm speculators), not so much.