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If you don't pay your electric bill on time, probably you'll get charged a buck or two in interest. As long as you pay off the balance in a reasonable amount of time, your lights will stay on.

So why is it such a big deal that the Treasury Department may soon be unable to pay all of its bills on time?

U.S. Treasury securities are used as both currency and collateral for countless financial transactions around the world. Think dozens per minute.

Right now, Treasurys are almost as liquid and secure as cash. If investors are at all nervous that they might not be honored, this could have a cascading effect that will cause stock markets to tumble, the dollar to lose value and unemployment to rise.

"If Treasury bonds were no longer seen as risk-free, that would have implications for virtually all collateralized loans, which is a huge proportion," says Phillip Swagel, a University of Maryland economist who served as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy under President George W. Bush.

"If people couldn't hold Treasurys, they would have to hold a lot of cash," he says. "We don't want people to feel like they have to hoard cash to make transactions."

Still A Big 'If'

Note that Swagel is still using the word "if." No one knows whether time will run out on the Treasury Department's authority to raise money.

Technically, it ran out in May, but the department has been able to keep juggling since then. The nominal deadline Congress and President Obama have been working with is Thursday, when the Treasury says it will be unable to borrow any more money by issuing bonds.

Politics

How The Debt Limit Became 'A Nuclear-Tipped Leverage Point'

Thieves, using axes and smoke grenades, break into a Swiss luxury watch store and make off with more than $2 million in loot.

What sounds like a scene from the latest Hollywood crime caper actually took place earlier this month in central Paris — in the latest of a wave of high-profile European jewelry heists.

It's been a particularly rich year for thieves in Europe, who have stolen tens of millions of dollars in diamonds and other precious gems so far. Worldwide jewelry thefts total more than $100 million each year, according to the FBI.

By European standards, the latest heist in Paris is pretty small potatoes. Compare it to the $105 million worth of rings and necklaces that were snatched in 2008 from the Paris outpost of Harry Winston, a premier American jeweler, or the $50 million worth of gems stolen from a plane waiting on the tarmac in Brussels earlier this year.

And there's the whole string of high-profile jewel thefts in southern France this spring, including one at a hotel in Cannes where a lone thief made off with more than $135 million in diamonds.

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A 7.2-magnitude earthquake killed at least 32 people across the central Philippines on Tuesday, toppling buildings and historic churches and sending terrified residents into deadly stampedes.

Panic ensued as people spilled out on the street after the quake struck at 8:12 a.m. It was centered about 20 miles below Carmen town on Bohol Island, where many buildings collapsed, roads cracked up and bridges fell. Extensive damage also hit densely populated Cebu city, across the narrow strait from Bohol, causing deaths when a fish port and a market roof fell.

The quake set off a stampede in a Cebu gym where people lined up to receive government cash assistance, killing five and injuring eight others, said Neil Sanchez, provincial disaster management officer. In another city nearby, 18 people were injured in the scramble to get out of a shaking building where the assistance was being handed out.

At least 16 people died in Bohol and 15 in Cebu, officials said. Scores were injured.

"We ran out of the building, and outside, we hugged trees because the tremors were so strong," said Vilma Yorong, a Bohol provincial government employee.

"When the shaking stopped, I ran to the street and there I saw several injured people. Some were saying their church has collapsed," she told The Associated Press by phone.

As fear set in, Yorong and the others ran up a mountain, afraid a tsunami would follow the quake. "Minutes after the earthquake, people were pushing each other to go up the hill," she said.

But the quake was centered inland and did not cause a tsunami.

Offices and schools were closed for a national holiday — the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha — which may have saved lives. The earthquake also was deeper below the surface than the 6.9-magnitude temblor last year in waters near Negros Island, also in the central Philippines, that killed nearly 100 people.

Aledel Cuizon, who works for a Finnish company in Cebu, said the quake that caught her in her bedroom sounded like "a huge truck that was approaching and the rumbling sound grew louder as it got closer."

She and her neighbors ran outside, where she saw "the electric concrete poles were swaying like coconut trees." She said it lasted 15-20 seconds.

Cebu city's hospitals quickly evacuated patients in the streets, basketball courts and parks.

Cebu province, about 350 miles south of Manila, has a population of more than 2.6 million people. Cebu is the second largest city after Manila. Nearby Bohol has 1.2 million people and is popular among foreigners because of its beach and island resorts and the Chocolate Hills.

Many roads and bridges were reported damaged, but historic churches dating from the Spanish colonial period suffered the most. Among them is the country's oldest, the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, which lost its bell tower.

A 17th-century limestone church in Loboc town, southwest of Carmen, crumbled to pieces, with nearly half of it reduced to rubble.

Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said that he recalled soldiers from the holiday furlough to respond to the quake. He said it damaged the pier in Tagbilaran, Bohol's provincial capital, and caused some cracks at Cebu's international airport but that navy ships and air force planes could use alternative ports to help out.

Passenger flights resumed later Tuesday after officials checked runways and buildings for damage.

A strong earthquake has left dozens of people dead in the Philippines. The temblor, whose magnitude was first reported as 7.2 and then downgraded to 7.1, struck near the city of Catigbian in the inland area of Bohol, one of the central Visayas Islands.

At least 93 people have been reported dead, and the casualty count is likely to grow as rescue and recovery teams reach areas that were cut off by rubble and other obstructions.

The earthquake struck just after 8 a.m. local time Tuesday, a national holiday observing the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. At least 10 quakes with a magnitude of 5 or higher were detected in the hours that followed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"Low-rise buildings collapsed on at least two islands and historic churches cracked and crumbled during the quake," Reuters reports, "which sparked panic, cut power and transport links and forced hospitals to evacuate patients."

The quake also damaged tourist attractions, such as the famed Chocolate Hills of Bohol. A photo of the damage to one hill that was posted to Twitter by tourist Robert Michael Poole.

Churches that have stood for hundreds of years also suffered damage, including the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, The Associated Press reports.

The death toll was worsened by at least two stampedes of panicked people who had gathered to receive payments in a social welfare program for families with young children; a government agency says a four-year-old child died in one of the incidents, and that at least 35 people were injured.

The U.S. Geological Survey gives us some background on the area's tectonics:

"The Philippine Islands straddle a region of complex tectonics at the intersection of three major tectonic plates (the Philippine Sea, Sunda and Eurasia plates). As such, the islands are familiar with large and damaging earthquakes, and the region within 500 km of the October 15 earthquake has hosted 19 events of M6 or greater, a dozen of which have been shallow (0-70 km). One of these, a M 6.8 earthquake 70 km to the east of the October 15, 2013 event in 1990, caused several casualties."