The deadline for Congress to pass a government funding bill has come and gone, and the US government is now closed. Well, it's closed for roughly 800,000 federal workers, who won't get paid until a budget is set. As expected, the stock market responded by... rising? Okay, that wasn't expected. All the major US stock indices were up today while gold dropped nearly 3%. It's almost exactly opposite what intuition would have suggested would occur. Basically, investors have shown they aren't overly concerned this shutdown will hurt the economy. Most appear to believe the current Congressional issues will be short-lived. And while the current round of political nonsense may be mostly harmless, if the same tactics are used with the debt-ceiling showdown, there's going to be a big price to pay. Let's hope Congress wakes up by then.