U.S. may lose AAA-rating, Moody's warns_English_Xinhua
NEW YORK, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) --
The United States my lose its AAA-rating if it can not control its deficit hike, rating agency Moody's Investors Service warned on Thursday.
Steven Hess, Moody's lead analyst for the United States, said in a TV interview that the AAA rating of the United States is "not guaranteed." He said if the U.S. deficit does not drop to a sustainable level in the next three to four years, the U.S. rating will be "in jeopardy."
The U.S. government posted a record deficit of 1.417 trillion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Stimulus package to combat the severe recession and a series of bailout rescues to banks and automakers have put a heavy burden on government spending.
The Obama administration has predicted that deficits would top 1 trillion dollars through fiscal year 2011.
Does anyone realize what the implications of what a less than an AAA rating would do to lending and interest rates in this country? Thanks Obama and Congress for leading us down the path of economic destruction!
Take Obama out of the picture and you still have trillion dollar deficits and it should also be noted that if Obama were to balance the budget today by budget cuts you would see a 10% reduction to the economy. No president would do that or are you honestly going to say that McCain would have the balls to throw the country into the deepest recession ever.
No one is proposing massive cuts in spending during a recession. How about freezing the greatest expansion of government spending since World War II?
Washington Times - Big government gets bigger
George W. Bush rode into Washington almost eight years ago astride the horse of smaller government. He will leave it this winter having overseen the biggest federal budget expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven decades ago.
Not since World War II, when the nation mobilized to fight a global war against fascism and recover from the Great Depression, has government spending played as large a role in the economy as it does today.
This time, it is a rapid mobilization against another global enemy — Islamist terrorism — that lies behind much of the growth. But rising spending on discretionary domestic programs has also played its part.
"We have now presided over the largest increase in the size of government since the Great Society," said Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate vying to replace Mr. Bush in the White House, during the first presidential debate.
That, in fact, was an understatement. No president since FDR — who offered a New Deal to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and then fought World War II — has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy.
And now comes the Next Deal — the rapid-fire series of programs announced in recent weeks to deal with a global financial crisis that few Americans even understand. It has begun with a decision to use $700 billion in taxpayer money to buy up financial assets and take an ownership stake in the nation's largest banks and could be followed by a stimulus program of up to $300 billion driven by congressional Democrats.
As a result, Mr. Bush already is the first president in history to implement budgets that crossed the $2 trillion a year and $3 trillion a year marks. His final budget, which comes to an end Sept. 30, conceivably could near $4 trillion, depending on the final tab for the financial rescue.
Then Obama pay as you go comes along....what kind of deficits does he run?
Is It President Obama's Deficit Yet?
Since August 2007 official estimates of current federal budget deficits have soared from about $100 billion to well over $1 trillion. By one reckoning, about 46 cents of every dollar of federal spending this year will be financed by borrowed money—not tax revenue.
Among the reasons for the growing gap between federal tax revenue and spending are the subprime financial crisis and its attendant bailouts, the recession, Detroit, and the initiatives taken by the Obama administration.
As the federal budget deficit has widened, the national debt has soared. The Treasury finances the deficit by offering new securities, driving up the national debt, dollar for dollar with each annual deficit. By the end of calendar 2008, the total national debt had risen to $10.7 trillion, about twice the level eight years earlier.
Is this debt surge just a temporary response in an emergency, one that can be ignored? Probably not.
So about 20 percent of the annual deficit is due to new Obama programs......what happened to pay as you go?
