Might patrons of well-placed members of Congress short-sell stocks and other financial instruments to profit from the approaching chaos of a government shutdown?

I probably should not speculate on something so unknowable at this point. After all, I’ve just spent four years researching my Presidential Puppetry book, and documenting it with some 1,100 endnotes.

Right now, neither I nor anyone else can get to the bottom soon of any financial shenanigans that might be occurring in the manufactured crisis of a shutdown. Probably no one could give a definitive answer even years from now.

Conventional wisdom is that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), left, is simply trying to appease his radical right GOP members.

So why broach the idea of a more complicated alternative? It risks undermining research on other investigative and political topics where findings can be documented with the hindsight of history.