Washington – Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.
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The credit rating agency said that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.
A source familiar with the discussions said that the Obama administration feels the S&P’s analysis contained “deep and fundamental flaws.”
S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years. It said such a downgrade to AA would occur if the agency sees less reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.
S&P first put the government on notice in April that a downgrade was possible unless Congress and the administration came up with a credible long-term deficit reduction plan and avoided a default on the country’s debt.
After months of wrangling and negotiations with the administration, Congress passed this week a debt reduction package at the 11th-hour that averted a possible default.
In its statement, S&P said that it had changed its view “of the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties” over a credible deficit reduction plan.
S&P said it was now “pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics anytime soon.”
All they are doing is stating the obvious. We have an enormous debt built up over decades with both parties to blame. Unless these tea baggers get real about the need to balance the spending cuts with some new revenues from closing tax loopholes, it will never get fixed. From a practical point of view, this will have no real affect on borrowing costs since even with our problem, U.S. debt is the most secure in the world.
This is thanks to Obama failed policies. Liberalism is a failure. He’s not gonna be reelected you hear charlie hall, poor you, your utopia hasn’t work.
Man, this President is the workst ever!!
Dumbocrats made fun of Bush for saying the war was won from a battleship deck when it wasn’t, yet not a peep from these same sycophants when this imbecilic, megalomaniac, marxist socialist (as opposed to lenonist or trotskyite), pathological liar gets up ands says in his state of the Union that we are fine, and now we are DOWNGRADED! We are now worse off than England, Germany, Canada and France!! Anyone realize we are now worse off than 3 countries that were near obliterated about 70 years ago! this guy needs to be replaced pronto! 2012 cant come fast enough!!
Obama…………………. need I say more?
Isnt it so friendly that so many little narcissists like to blame Mr. Obama for a problem that is years in creation? I am amazed at the audacity of the little tykes today!
i dont understand how the dems arent ashamed of blaming the repubs about the downgrade?????? if the economy is good u try to take credit on it if it fails u blame others????? how can we have sucha leader that doesnt know how to take real responsibility on things obama u failed wake up and smell the tea party
The republicans are just as responsible for this as the democrats.
According to CBO, over $4 trillion of the $14+ trillion deficit is attibutable to Bush’s two wars and his tax cuts.
youre blaming obama? he came into office amidst the worst economy since the depression thanks to bush’s policies, and had to pump trillions into it to save us from total collapse. this stimulus policy was crafted and pushed by bernanke and geithner, both of whom were bush’s guys. and then he has to pay hundreds of billions every year into a pointless war in iraq which happened to be horrible for israel, as well as in afghanistan. oh yeah…and all that without the taxes that would have been received had bush not cut the top tax rate.many republicans dont like to think so they just attribute anything negative to obama. and then when they hear that bin-laden was killed in a risky operation approved by obama, they give him no credit since bush started the actions in afghanistan. so bush started the war when the outcome is a dead bin-laden but its obamas fault that it costs money.
The credit rating downgrade is a blessing in disguise. It has never ever happened once throughout the entire history of our country, and it happened now on Obamas’ watch. All I can say is he charmed the pants off a lot of people in 08′ but people have wizened to his tactics, and after this, he has a snowballs chance in hell of staying on for a 2nd term. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
On a side note, does anybody notice how much mudslinging liberals do? especially on this site. Yaakov321 calls all GOP’ers “Narcissists”. Hows about you go take your petty insults and your “Un-Capitalist” social justice and wealth redistribution / Robin Hood theories, and move to Europe somewhere where you are in agreement with their policies! Americans will NOT stand to fork over more of their hard-earned cash any longer, and 2012 will prove it!
Interesting Standard&Poor; failed to downgrade the “financial instrument” , fancy bathroom tissue and made a slight error of inflating the debt by 2 trillion dollars, pocket money of course but otherwise insists on credibility
Healthy capitalism has enriched this country, not the robber barons. Big “government” results from wild west capatilism. Siemens is world wide , and has the best medical scanning equipment, It won over GE a billion dollar contract for building hydroelectric power project on the Yangtze river and on the board of directors [Aufsichtsrat] there is Union member . The same goes for Mercedes Benz who is very successful in selling its cars on the American market. What America failed to build a better mouse trap. The tea bags with the
Christian message will not improve American job market. What will improve the job market are inventive engineers and new products.
What a joke.
How can any institution, individual or nation ever hope to function if it spends most of its income, like the US govt, paying off debts.
Of course, the US is downgraded and it will again and again.
Uncle Sam is a junky hooked on debt and borrowing.
Capitalism is, by its very nature, compromised and rotten to the core. But as long as the financial mafia , Wall St. big business and their moronic supporters at the polls ( both Dems and Republicans) continue to support this, nothing will change.
And, no, moshiakh is not going to to give you all the big pie in the sky that will wipe clean the slate.
You are all going to have to face reality.
Get real.
I did look up the quotation, and he was actually referring to the nutritional aspect that without milk, babies would not survive. Search “Winston Churchill’s words articulate the enduring view that feeding babies properly” and its under “Infant feeding and child health.”