Standard & Poors Tea Party
They just threw America’s credit rating off Boston harbor.
The privately owned profit-making agency that fueled the economic crisis of 2008 by ranking Wall Street collections of junk-mortgages AAA has downgraded obligations of the United States to AA+, after a half-day delay to consider a Treasury Department notification of a $2 trillion error in their math.
In the world we live in, this move will shake confidence not in Standard & Poors but the U.S.
Even worse, the rationale for “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,” citing “political gridlock” in government policy-making.
Translation: They are dampening their pants over Tea Party terrorism in the debt-ceiling deal and covering their posteriors over the prospect of more of the same.
As the White House and GOP prepare to point fingers at each other in a blameathon, it might be noted that one of S & P’s recommendations for a remedy is that Washington try to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years and that anything less would be insufficient.
MORE.
11 Responses to “Standard & Poors Tea Party”
Sometimes a word to the wise is sufficient. In the case of our current government, not so.
S&P and Moody’s plus Fitch, have been warning us for weeks, probably privately for longer.
Does it take a fish slapping you in the face to realize you are in the water over your head.
We are acting like drunken sailors (sorry soldiers)and spending more than we are taking in.
It’s not rocket science, ask any teenager and of course he wants a bigger allowance but won’t get a cheaper cell phone or sneakers.
The Standard is Poor for all of us.
My, you are Moody today. Go Fitch a bagel and cream cheese.
It is standard for the poor to be moody…
The poor could abandon their moody
way for more standard ways, but a switch to the Fitch could bring an even moodier day.
You win, dduck.
(And in doing so, you got me moody. A poor standard to set)
I call it a tie.
The drunks are in denial, often angry when they are confronted.
And we hardly need “enablers” of the drunks, bashing S&P here.
Our short term debt seems safe to me. I see default (of some sort, including inflation) as inevitable, but it may take a few years.
And D. Duck’s critical view of Fannie Mae (or “Ginnie” as I called it just now, elsewhere) and Freddie Mac isn’t only D. Duck’s:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-downgraded-standard-poors-stock/story?id=14253014
POLITICS FOR PROFIT
Suppose you wanted to make a killing on the stock market. The first requirement is that you are a billionaire already—that way if the scheme backfires, you can just kick your dog and go on. One little problem however. “Talking down” a stock to lower its price so you can buy it cheap and sell later at a profit is illegal—life isn’t fair!
Some billionaires have figured out a way to get around that little problem, as the recent drop in the stock market shows. First, you sprinkle a little cigar money among right-wing “think tanks” to inspire their hack writers to endlessly “talk down” the entire U.S. economy. Ayn Rand addicts in Congress chime in and concoct various ways to slash and burn their way through the federal budget, taking specific aim at programs benefiting students, the ill, the elderly and the poor.
Naturally, the targeted groups and the increasingly nervous middle class cease spending except for the most dire necessities, the economy shudders and quakes, employers slash payrolls and defer expansions and upgrades. Finally, Standard and Poors, asleep during the Savings and Loan debacle, the Enron failure, the Bush liar-loan/”securitized debt obligations” train-wrecks, is prodded awake to pronounce the U.S. economy on life support.
Insulated by ideologues in Congress from paying taxes on their gains, clever billionaires make a list of companies to take over at fire-sale prices as stock prices go down, picking off take-over victims as though they were so many clay pigeons, reaming out their assets and sending their U.S. employees into the street.
Ho-hum, is it time for the next trophy wife, or a new yacht—this time with a helicopter pad and a ramp for the Rolls-or two?
Dan Townsend