You'd be surprised. Russia, which was still a pretty decent sized world power, defaulted on its debt in the 90s.<p>I'm not an expert on what occurred, but I believe the Russian government thought process was something along the lines of:
-We could either sell off all the country's assets
OR
-Default on debt now, have a bad reputation with future foreign investors, but not shrink our country further.<p>They went with option B.<p>Not saying this would or will happen to the USA, but theoretically it could.