Obama on the Downlow: US Credit Rating Lowered

[alaphiah]

S&P decided to lower the AAA rating, held by the United States for 70 years, to AA+ after a bipartisan debt deal signed into law this week failed to assuage concerns about the nation’s growing spending. -- Zachary A. Goldfarb

Democrats prevented the spending cuts needed to avert the lowering of the U.S. credit rating. Thus, for the first time in America’s history the U.S. good faith and credit is called into question under president Barry Hussein Soetoro and the Democrat controlled Senate. Democrats were wrong and House Republicans were right. (see story)

Typically, the term “on the downlow” is reserved for guys who sneak around, and hide abnormal activities from girlfriends. Read more... Creating Orwellian Worldview

 

[Wry Catcher]

S&P decided to lower the AAA rating, held by the United States for 70 years, to AA+ after a bipartisan debt deal signed into law this week failed to assuage concerns about the nation’s growing spending. -- Zachary A. Goldfarb

Democrats prevented the spending cuts needed to avert the lowering of the U.S. credit rating. Thus, for the first time in America’s history the U.S. good faith and credit is called into question under president Barry Hussein Soetoro and the Democrat controlled Senate. Democrats were wrong and House Republicans were right. (see story)

Typically, the term “on the downlow” is reserved for guys who sneak around, and hide abnormal activities from girlfriends. Read more... Creating Orwellian Worldview

As previously noted you're a failure as a troll. Everyone who has followed the debt ceiling debate knows the crisis was manufactured by the radical Republicans as a gambit, hoping in doing so to take an advantage in the political arena. That too appears to have failed. Only the real crazy fringe who lean Republican don't know it.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

The sad thing is... Obama probably doesn't give a shit other than for the flack he will catch.... now, certainly not from PMSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN.

 

[waltky]

Looks like we're gonna have our 'lost decade'...

S&P executive says it could take over a decade to restore US credit rating
08/07/11 - John Chambers, the chairman of Standard & Poor’s sovereign debt ratings, on Sunday estimated that it could take 9-18 years for the nation to regain its AAA credit rating.

Chambers said the credit agency could further downgrade the national rating depending on whether President Obama and congressional leaders can agree on reducing the deficit. He put the chances of another drop in the credit-rating score at one in three. Chambers said if the nation’s fiscal scenario worsens or political gridlock becomes more entrenched, “that could lead to a downgrade.”

Chambers said “it could take a while” for the U.S. to regain its perfect credit rating. “We've had five governments that lost their AAA that got it back. The amount of time that it took for those five range from 9 years to 18 years, so it takes a while,” Chambers said on ABC’s “This Week”.

The ratings-agency executive warned that Democrats and Republicans would have to compromise on reducing the nation’s $1.5 trillion annual deficit to win an upgrade from Standard & Poor’s.

“Our concerns are centered on the political side and on the fiscal side. So it would take a stabilization of the debt as a share of the economy and eventual decline. And it would take, I think, more ability to reach consensus in Washington than what we're observing now,” Chambers said.

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See also:

Granny says, "Dat's right - it's all S&P's fault...

S&P has no business downgrading US bond rating
August 8, 2011 - When and how America brings down its debt shouldn't matter to Standard & Poor’s. The ratings agency wasn't doing its job in 2008, when it gave Wall Street's riskiest securities a AAA rating, and it's not doing its job now by hurting the US economy with an unnecessary downgrade.

The Standard & Poor’s downgrade of America’s debt couldn’t come at a worse time. The result is likely to be higher borrowing costs for the government at all levels, and higher interest on your variable-rate mortgage, your auto loan, your credit card loans, and every other penny you borrow. Why did S&P do it? Not because America failed to pay its creditors on time. As you may have noticed, we avoided a default. And not because we might fail to pay our bills at the end of 2012 if tea-party Republicans again hold the nation hostage when their votes will next be needed to raise the debt ceiling. This is a legitimate worry and might have been grounds for a downgrade, but it’s not S&P’s rationale. S&P has downgraded the US because it doesn’t think we’re on track to reduce the nation’s debt enough to satisfy S&P – and we’re not doing it in a way S&P prefers.

Who gave S&P authority to tell US how to shed debt?

Here’s what S&P said: “The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.” S&P also blames what it considers to be weakened “effectiveness, stability, and predictability” of US policymaking and political institutions. Pardon me for asking, but who gave Standard & Poor’s the authority to tell America how much debt it has to shed, and how? If we pay our bills, we’re a good credit risk. If we don’t, or aren’t likely to, we’re a bad credit risk. When, how, and by how much we bring down the long-term debt – or, more accurately, the ratio of debt to GDP – is none of S&P’s business.

The irony: S&P is partly to blame for America's current state

S&P’s intrusion into American politics is also ironic because, as I pointed out recently, much of our current debt is directly or indirectly due to S&P’s failures (along with the failures of the two other major credit-rating agencies (Fitch and Moody’s) to do their jobs before the financial meltdown. Until the eve of the collapse, S&P gave triple-A ratings to some of the Street’s riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Had S&P done its job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn’t have become so large – and their bursts wouldn’t have brought down much of the economy.

You and I and other taxpayers wouldn’t have had to bail out Wall Street; millions of Americans would now be working instead of collecting unemployment insurance; the government wouldn’t have had to inject the economy with a massive stimulus to save millions of other jobs; and far more tax revenue would now be pouring into the Treasury from individuals and businesses doing better than they are now. In other words, had Standard & Poor’s done its job over the last decade, today’s budget deficit would be far smaller and the nation’s future debt wouldn’t look so menacing. We’d all be better off had S&P done the job it was supposed to do, then. We’ve paid a hefty price for its nonfeasance. A pity S&P is not even doing its job now. We’ll be paying another hefty price for its malfeasance today.

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