This week, the United States had its credit rating downgraded from AAA to AA-plus, making our nation the financial equivalent of the short, fat, bald, masked guy in those FreeScore.com commercials. In announcing the downgrade, Standard & Poor's cited "the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties" over reducing the deficit, and indicated they wanted even more spending cuts from Congress -- joining the misguided consensus that completely misses the fact that economic growth is the most powerful weapon against the deficit. The White House challenged S&P's analysis, claiming it was off by trillions of dollars. Maybe the ratings agency was using the same math it had when it helped create the fiscal crisis we are still struggling to get out of by awarding AAA ratings to trillions of dollars in subprime mortgages repackaged as securities.
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U.S. Loses AAA Credit Rating as S&P Slams Debt - Bloomberg
S&P downgrades US credit rating from AAA - Yahoo! Finance
Wall Street shares slump as S&P downgrades US debt outlook ...
U.S. Credit Downgraded: S&P Reduces Rating To ... - Huffington Post
S&P Downgrade Heralds A New Financial Era For ... - Huffington Post
Within the context of Chinese philosophy, The Art of War by Sun Tzu for example; politics (and economic trade) are considered as extensions of military philosophy --- not alternatives to it.
If this were a regular "shooting" war, there would be no debate over increasing military spending; but because tanks have been replaced by cargo containers, both parties refuse to spend the necessary funds to wage economic war against those with this alternative philosophy ...
Being the good little naive free-market capitalists that we are; we apparently cannot understand that economic trade implemented through strategic centralized planning can also be used as a weapon.
Perhaps if we were closer to the Cold War of twenty years ago, this would be better understood.
The Soviet Union often employed trade barriers, "dirty tricks", and other economic means to gain economic and eventual military advantage over their adversaries ...
I had hoped that those employed by S&P and management had a deeper understanding of the world's political and economic problems ...
Circumstances are worse ... Things are definitely worse ...
Bob is poking me in the back of the head, saying go ahead....
Ok.....Govenrment Officials Got Down Graded, Not America.
The Bad Boy Of Crogress....aaahhhh, Bad Boys Bad Boys what you going to do now, you all are just as poor as us now.....Send another $16 trillion Dollars Overseas....oh, you all didnt Know in the last 10 years between $48.2 TR. to $100 Trillion Dollars spent, gone, and I am surprised to see you all on TV,. There Is a very good chance by 2016 all most all 90% of you all will be voted out of office and for the very first time CNN blasted Congress, and said they should be voted out...
Good by Bad Boys oF Congress I will miss you all.....
Henry Massingale
"This article was published in the Financial Times on Aug. 8, 2011, and as an earlier version on FT.com.Governments will strike a better balance between regulatory oversight and granting the agencies such influential monopoly power. This will force investors to do what they should have been doing for years: conduct their own due diligence, rather than rely on outsiders.Then there are the wider systemic effects. With America occupying the core of the world’s financial system, Friday’s downgrade will erode over time the standing of the global public goods it supplies – from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency to its financial markets as the best place for other countries to deposit savings.
This will weaken the effectiveness of the US as the global anchor, accelerating the unsteady migration to a multipolar system.There is one particularly difficult analytical question. Will the global system sustainably resume normal operations with an AA+ America at its core, or are further structural changes inevitable? The latter would involve the proliferation of bilateral payments agreements, even weaker global governance and heightened risk of economic fragmentation.Many of these consequences will be forestalled by the fact that no other country can yet replace the US at the centre of the global system."
Now for logical scrutiny of S&P in light of the other two rating companies here in the States...
The lack of warnings of this economic mess erodes
their credibility. Their actions harmed our country
and they just say OH we were off just 2 Trillion
Investigation and oversight is needed..........