From the Washington Post:
Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system.
Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.” It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings “fell short” of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future…
Conveniently done after the markets close in order to avoid a crash…and remember why we’re here: because Obama and his Democrats tacked on an additional trillion a year in spending and didn’t want to give any of it up. Just a couple hundred billion dollar cut next year – which would have had us still spending hundreds of billions more than in 2008 – would have done the trick. It would have showed that we have the political will, right now, to deal with the debt. But, nothing doing from Obama…he has to keep the money flowing to his special interest groups no matter what.
2012 can’t get here fast enough.
Blogs For Victory 
Mark, Stop being a fear monger. All is well. The econmy is improving and will kep improving as long as we keep spending more money. Not so?
Just in case you are wondering who s&p gives money to. Mostly donks.
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/175739-sap-execs-have-favored-democrats-in-recent-cycles
The S&P is blaming everyone for not being able to reduce the deficit.
Boner and Obama gave us a slow down in the growth. 1 trillion over 10 years and that’s the best we can do. A giant game of chicken where in the end Boner got no new taxes and minimal DOD cuts in exchange for Obama keeping the ax from falling anywhere else.
Maybe Obama should have been more aggressive with the S&P when they rated junk bonds at AAA status a few years back.
But, but, but me this but, turbo timmy said there was no chance of a down grade. A slow down in growth? Please don’t make me laugh. The only thing this deal gave the people was 2.4 trillion dollars of more legalized theft and you know it.
A pox on all thier houses.
It’s not clear if there will be a bipartisan effort to get rid of Tim and Ben or a bipartisan effort to keep them.
dolf, perhaps you could keep your personal sexual obsessions separate from your blog posts, ‘kay?
What comes to your mind when you see the Speaker of the House is really of interest only to you, and your fey vulgarity while exposing TMI regarding your sexual interests should really be kept to yourself.
Why not keep it within your darling little group, where you can all titter at it appreciatively, and spare us?
Amy
I happen to like Neo’s euphemism for John.
Shouldn’t you be calling someone’s ex-girlfriend a whore? Stay classy Amy.
But the only person I have called a “whore” is Ken Salazar, and I specifically called him a “political whore”.
Do try to keep up.
And don’t try to pull a Sasan and make silly feeble excuses for being caught out for who/what you are. You are quite entittled to have your own reactions to and fantasies of the Speaker of the House. Just don’t share them with us.
eeeuuuwwwww
GMB: “The only thing this deal gave the people was 2.4 trillion dollars of more legalized theft and you know it.”
Legalized theft? Talk about deja vu – “The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate scheduled for release Wednesday.”
This from October of 2007 http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm
Of course I’m sure the number is only a coincidence, and our righteous, heroic wars of self-defense have nothing to do with our economic difficulties…
Ahhh, little denny looks only where he wants. For adjusted dollars:
Clinton’s first year: $1.6 trillion
Bush’s first year: $1.8 trillion
obAMATEUR’s first year: 21% of Clinton’s total EIGHT years
obAMATEUR has outspent, as you say, “Bush’s wars” for EIGHT years, in just TWO YEARS!!!. $5 trillion of added debt in just 30 months!!!
But as the typical drone, you again blame BUSH!… but BUSH! … but but BUSH!!
In 10 years the debt is projected to be $28.8 trillion before the “deal”. After the “deal”, $26.6 trillion. The “deal” only reduced the amount of increase. There are real NO SPENDING CUTS. You can tax “millionaires and billionaires” and it won’t make a dent.
That is why our rating was downgraded. obAMATEUR and the Democrats offered NOTHING that would have mattered. And the two proposals, Cap Cut and Balance and the Ryan plan actually would have been a better deal. But before said bills even made it to a vote in the House, obAMATEUR talked of VETO and Reid talked of squashing it in the Senate. The original “PARTY OF NO” has spoken again, with no compromise – no debate in the Senate, no offering of amendments – JUST NO!
Perspective matters there denny. It is a shame that you are intellectually dishonest to protect your pResident – no matter what.
Sorry, it’s easy to pin this on Obama, but I’m going to blame Boehner for this one. If they didn’t get a debt deal then the debt was going to be downgraded, that’s the fear mongering and terrorist threats we heard all of the last three weeks….
Well, as it turned out the ONLY possible way to avoid a debt downgrade was for Boehner to block any increase in the debt ceiling and force the government to reduce it’s spending back to the 2008 levels in order to pay it’s debt.
You have selective eyesight dennis? Go away troll.
As an afterthought, since bams got credit for a .1% drop in unemployment does he get credit for the down grade too?
GMB, I wasn’t naming names but addressing legalized theft of the public purse via American policy – which can be attributed to both sides of the aisle.
Selective eyesight? Announcing the downgrade, S&P notes “America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what they previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy… It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.”
Further, 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 would necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”
I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but had Congress agreed to a modest tax hike on the very wealthiest and corporate renegades, in addition to the spending cuts enacted, we’d not be in this spot right now.
Finally this, from Fred Bauer at the Frum Forum: “Perhaps the US government should not dance to the tune of (far from infallible) ratings agencies, but S&P does have a worthy point in this: in order for our government to work in the long term, it must have some kind of governable consensus. We must also have an economics anchored in reality and not in ideology, and a fiscal politics of compromise and empiricism instead of flamboyance and wrath.”
http://www.frumforum.com/sp-makes-clear-dysfunctional-politics-have-a-price
S&P is smart enough to realize that if you increase taxes on the very wealthiest and corporate renegades (as you put it), then tax revenues go down. S&P has some of the world’s best economists working for it, unlike the Congressional Budget Office that just has government workers in it. While the CBO thinks increasing taxes means increasing revenue, S&P understands that depending on who you increase taxes on, revenue may go down.
Had congress instead passed a bill that said there would be no debt ceiling increase and that the President must pay all debt obligations prior to paying other obligations, then S&P would not have downgraded the debt.
Doug
“some of the world’s best economists” is like valedictorian of summer school or best looking waitress at Denny’s. Maybe you think they are brighter than the folks at CBO but I recall the S&P gave AAA rating to junk bonds a few years ago.
The point of course should be that the US credit rating should be so strong even morons would give it AAA.
bardolf,
Yes, they did, but please try to remember that the credit crisis that caused those bonds to go junk was brought on, caused and made worse, by government actions that occurred in a very short period of time; actions that were not predictable.
Revisionist history of the credit crisis fails to point out the one thing that would have completely avoided all of it…Fed regulation that banks had to devalue their whole mortgage holdings when only a couple loans went bad. Billions in mortgage back securities were devalued overnight because of the regulation. When that occurred the banks themselves no longer had sufficient assets to cover their outstanding loans (again according to Fed regulation), so the next night banks started to ‘fail’ and it was a very quick spiral…..all leading in a very short period of time to the credit crisis that wiped out bond values.
Had the feds altered either of those two requirements, AAA bonds would still be AAA bonds.
We do not have a tax problem. We have a spending problem. What is so hard to understand about that. You can keep looting the treausry all you want to pay for your pet projects but in the end it will fail and it will bring this country down with it.
Until we stop paying for stuff that the constitution does not authorize we will keep getting closer to the end.
No where in the constitution does it provide for paying for anyones medical care or even paying for someone to eat off the taxpayers. It does provide for paying for our defense.
A pox on all those who spend other peoples money for votes.
Once again it pays for a defense of the American people. It isn’t to be a police force for the world at large. Sorry but breaking up civil wars and trying to jump start democracies is going to have to wait.
Sorry Syria, Libya, Egypt you’re gonna have to get rid of the tyrannies on your own. I’m betting in the end you’ll prefer that to US support. That way the next generation of nuts can’t claim that the US interfered on the one side or another.
I agree stool, our federal government should be much more concerned with seat belt violators than Islamic jihadists. Good call.
I agree with Bardolf. It is time to quit being the policeman for the world. If the egyptians , syrians libyans iraqis, afghanis want to live in “Islamic Republics” let them. Saving the muzzies from themselves is not worth the life of one American Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine.
Keep them out of the United States? Yes. Boots on thier grounds. NO! not anymore.
Clueless
If police officers were dying continually to give tickets you might have a point. If any of the countries mentioned was exporting jihad aimed at the US you might have a point. If taxpayers were spending trillions for traffic cops you might have a point.
Milk the tax payer cow i tell ya milk the tax payer cow!!!! Thats all the left has got anymore along with “you are a racist, islamaphope, homophope, reich wing terrorist!!!!”
Yawn.
the socialists are winning…S&P employs socialists…socialists are embedded in the US Government…they have a common goal
js
socialists = marxists = communists = muslems all hell bent on the destruction of the US from within
barry soetoro aka barrrrakkk hussein is all the above.
REALLY? This guy hires socialists?
McGraw OWNS the S&P: http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/site/our-businesses/financial-services. He was a member of President George W. Bush’s Transition Advisory Committee on Trade, and is now a staunch supporter of MITT ROMNEY.
Socialists? Really?
Bozo
Just shows McGraw is deep deep deep deep undercover. You really don’t understand these socialists.
A classic example of the sneakiness of these folks was recently brought to light. The details are still sketchy but 2 unknown, forgotten sociologists hatched a plot in the 60’s to supposedly try and “end poverty”. Nobody truly understood their nefarious scheme until 2009 when Glenn Beck outed the sneaky Canadian septuagenarian socialist Frances Fox Piven and her (deceased) husband Cloward. Thankfully Beck’s audience did the right thing and immediately started with death threats.
And dolf is still valiantly trying to assure the Silliness Title, yet again.
Don’t worry, dolfie—you’re a shoo-in.
A classic example of the obtuseness (or dishonesty) of baldorf was recently brought to light . The details are far from sketchy, except in dolf’s false account, but two lecturers at Columbia University, during the time our Dear Leader claims to have been a student there, hatched a scheme by which the United States government could be brought to the brink of collapse, if not actually pushed over the edge.
This scheme, which claimed to be part of a plot to “end poverty” by putting the federal government in charge of the economy of the nation and redistribution of its assets, has been well known for a couple of decades and the subject of many references to tactics of the rabidly radical Left.
Many understood this nefarious scheme even before Glenn Beck discussed it, and also understood that the age of one of its creators or the room temperature of the other were both irrelevant to the simple fact that they devised a method of undermining and perhaps destroying the United States economy to facilitate a Leftist takeover of the nation.
Thankfully, Beck’s audience understood the ramifications of such a scheme as well as the probability that our President had been exposed to it and its creators if in fact he was attending Columbia University at the time they were lecturing there. They looked at the way the nation was being run under this man’s administration and wondered if the correlations they saw between the scheme and the reality of the administration’s efforts were merely coincidence.
Claims of death threats are merely fatuous but failed efforts at fey humor.
ITALY KNOWS MAFIA CRIME BOSSES when they see them…