With just 18 days left until the country could default on its debt, Fox & Friends decided to have a little laugh this morning over the ongoing negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. Since today also marks the release of the final Harry Potter film, Fox & Friends put together a mash-up of the two, splicing together footage of Speaker John Boehner and President Obama castigating each other with scenes of dragons breathing fire and wizards swooping on brooms:

“Hugely Partisan and the Deathly Debt Ceiling” -- like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Clever, eh?

The mash-up is reminiscent of a spoof Fox & Friends put together last year to mock negotiations over the health care bill: fake credits comparing the political players to characters from the soap opera Dynasty. Fox cast Obama as “The Charming (but Dithering) Boss” while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was “The Fast Talking Hustler from the East”; Boehner, then Minority Leader, was cast as “The Hunk.”

It's nice to see Fox lightening up, but the debt ceiling is hardly a laughing matter. Experts agree that failing to raise the debt ceiling could have severe economic consequences. Politico reported in April that Boehner has had conversations with “top Wall Street executives, asking how close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without sending interests rates soaring and causing stock prices to go lower.” A former Treasury official, Jim Millstein, has told CNBC that a U.S. default on its debt obligations “would make the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy look like a walk in a park on a sunny day.”

Even figures on Fox News itself have warned that a default crisis would be seriously bad: Fox Business host Stuart Varney agreed with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that it would be "Armageddon," and Fox News contributor Bernie Goldberg has said it would be “catastrophic.”

Now there are reports that ratings agency Standard & Poor's is warning there is a “50 percent chance” it will downgrade the government's credit rating within three months because of the deadlock, according to The New York Times. (Fox & Friends did acknowledge this report on air.)

This follows many months of Fox News pundits' ignoring economists to claim that it's "pure fiction" and “doomsday rhetoric” that failure to raise the debt ceiling could cause economic catastrophe. Memo to Fox: Harry Potter is not going to step off the big screen to wave his wand and make it all go away. This is a serious problem -- start taking it seriously.