The world-rattling debt limit fight in Washington finally ground out a truce Tuesday, just in time to pull the United States back from the brink of a possibly earth-shaking default.

The months-long tug of war between Democrats and Republicans, however, failed to defuse Washington's debt bomb for good, only delaying an immediate detonation by making the fuse an inch longer.

Meanwhile, the madcap farce of brinkmanship has disclosed yet another ticking bomb in the heartland of the sole superpower in the world -- the crippling tendency to politicize the economics while trivializing the politics.

Largely in line with the predominant projection, lawmakers from both sides of Washington's political divide capped their gruelling game of chicken with a compromise barely before the deadline when the Treasury Department said Uncle Sam would run out of money to pay the bills.

The last-minute deal did head off the gloomy scenario that the largest economy in the world could not honor its IOUs. But obviously, the combination of a debt limit increase and a spending reduction did not pack a punch powerful enough to make any sizable dent in Washington's deeper fiscal woes.

With its debt already almost equaling its gross domestic product, the United States, as a major anchor of the increasingly globalized world economy and the issuer of the dominant international reserve currency, needs to roll out more responsible and effective measures to balance its budget and restore the economic health of itself and the world.

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