The hard part about playing 'chicken' is knowing when to flinch.

So says Captain Bart Mancuso in the movie The Hunt for Red October—and observers of the U.S. debt-ceiling debate are seeing what he means. This game of chicken is playing out in real time in Washington, with varying degrees of posturing and hard lines being drawn (in pencil) that are giving credence to the possibility that the nation may soon face a real debt-ceiling debacle.

Tax Day has come and gone, and the tally of those receipts is helping to provide a more precise picture of how long the U.S. government has until Uncle Sam is pulling nothing but lint from his pockets. Yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that her department's ability to forestall default through "extraordinary" accounting measures may be exhausted by June 1. Most experts believe that a default is unlikely, even in the event of a prolonged debt-ceiling impasse. Still, treasury professionals have become de facto participants in the game, through no fault of their own, and need to be thinking about strategies to keep their cash allocations protected and fully liquid in the coming months.