After a week of meetings on the debt ceiling, Congress, the White House and the country still do not have a clear path forward to avoid a cataclysmic default with just four days when both the House and Senate are scheduled to be in session before June 1, when the US could default on its obligations. On one hand, it looks like this could go to the brink. On the other, there have been pockets of progress over the intervening days and signs that some of the most stringent and hardened positions negotiators have been echoing over the last three months are slowly beginning to soften.