The option of paying off debt through inflation has always existed. The debt ceiling crisis is just a show to hide the real problem: the long-standing, global, long-term stagnation of productivity growth. This makes deficits a necessity to support the economy and interest rates, otherwise the current economy (and the future returns of wealth) would be worse than it is now.
None of this has much to do with P123 traders, however. What matters is systematic statistical analysis of probabilities (an advanced version of which is also called machine learning or AI) and also systematically following predictions to trade, no matter what your underlyings are.
Just like if I had to trade mega-cap stocks and my strategy told me to buy NVIDIA, I wouldn't hesitate to buy NVIDIA even if I thought it was a scam. My model has told me many times to buy common stocks of crap companies that I think they have completely unsustainable business models, but I don't hesitate to buy them - if I even read what those companies were.
Interestingly, investment banks and hedge funds have actually performed worse than mutual funds in this regard. It may be that investment banks and hedge funds lack the risk controls, collective participation and bureaucratic procedures that mutual funds have. The latter inhibits managers from being overly reckless in buying expensive junks.
The idea that the 2008 crisis had anything to do with the black swan analogy is really just a reflection of the ignorance and arrogance that was prevalent in the financial industry prior to 2008: many believed that a new era had dawned "this time is different". But in reality, given the stock market crises of 1973-1982, not to mention 1929-1933, it is simply ludicrous for Taleb to call an event like '08 a so-called "black swan event" that "has never been seen or imagined, but did happen!"
It's as if factor investors prior to '08 thought the severe momentum collapse of 1932-1933 could never happen again, but the momentum collapse actually happened again in 2009. Even the value factor collapse of 2018-2020 was seen in the 19th century. But people just choose to deliberately forget the bad things to better walk into the darkness and then claim they were hit by a black swan event. No, you just crashed into a tree.
Also, the risk of uncompensated nationalization of assets, which occurred in Eastern Europe (especially Russia) and China, cannot be ignored. Hyperinflation crises and sovereign debt crises around the world during the Napoleonic War and in various developing countries over the long term are also deliberately ignored to improve the "confidence". And historical data on asset classes always has upward biases in future returns even when it is perfectly correct because asset classes themselves have been selectively biased.
In short, people like to stay optimistic and positive, but this is not good for preserving and growing wealth.