AAA Downgrade: Republicans Ecstatic:

One of the three cred­it rat­ings agen­cies Standard and Poor“s has down­grad­ed America’s cred­it rat­ing from the gold stan­dard AAA to a less pres­ti­gious AA+ . What this means is that America which was once seen as a pris­tine risk free place to invest is less so. Standard and Poors had informed the Obama Administration of their inten­tion to down­grade, the Administration dis­agreed with the deci­sion and point­ed to what they said was over two tril­lion dol­lars of dis­par­i­ty in S&P“s Calculations..

Of note is the fact that the oth­er two rat­ings Agencies Fitch and Moodies main­tained America’s AAA ratings.

In a state­ment S&P had this to say:

We have low­ered our long-term sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ing on the United States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A‑1+’ short-term rat­ing. We have also removed both the short and long-term rat­ings from CreditWatch neg­a­tive. 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’smedi­um-term debt dynam­ics. More broad­ly, the down­grade reflects our view that the effec­tive­ness, sta­bil­i­ty, and pre­dictabil­i­ty of American pol­i­cy­mak­ing and polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions have weak­ened at a time of ongo­ing fis­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges to a degree more than we envi­sioned when we assigned a neg­a­tive out­look to the rat­ing on April 18, 2011.Since then, we have changed our view of the dif­fi­cul­ties in bridg­ing the gulf between the polit­i­cal par­ties over fis­cal pol­i­cy, which makes us 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 any time soon. The out­look on the long-term rat­ing is neg­a­tive. We could low­er the long-term rat­ing to ‘AA’ with­in the next two years if we see that less reduc­tion in spend­ing than agreed to, high­er inter­est rates, or new fis­cal pres­sures dur­ing the peri­od result in a high­er gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt tra­jec­to­ry than we cur­rent­ly assume in our base case. www​.stan​dar​d​and​poors​.com/​r​a​t​i​n​g​s​d​i​r​ect.

“WOW”

The debt ceil­ing has been raised as a mat­ter of course under all recent American Presidents, in fact Ronald Reagan the holy grail of Republican con­ser­vatism saw 18 increas­es on his watch​.George Bush the most recent ver­sion of Republican Conservatism, had 7 increas­es on his watch. The debt ceil­ing has been raised three pre­vi­ous times under President Obama before the brouha­ha of the fourth increase, . The dif­fer­ence with the increas­es under Obama is that they were done to stave off a total col­lapse of the American econ­o­my and poten­tial­ly that of the entire world finan­cial system.

The debt ceil­ing was first installed in 1917, at that time the lim­it was 11.5 Billion, the debt ceil­ing cur­rent­ly stands at 14 tril­lion 294 Billion dol­lars. Since this ceil­ing was installed the coun­try has seen 74 increas­es from the ini­tial cap of 11.5 Billion to the present 14 tril­lion 294 Billion, the ceil­ing was insti­tut­ed to con­trol spend­ing , many argue that the debt ceil­ing is real­ly a fal­la­cy and should not even be there.

Whichever side of the debate you fall here is what’s going on.

Republicans man­u­fac­tured this cri­sis, the econ­o­my has been slug­gish but head­ing in the right direc­tion, one does not need a Harvard MBA to see this , as a mat­ter of fact we have seen what the last Harvard MBA in the White House was capa­ble of . The econ­o­my had been halt­ed from the clif­f’s edge, and is actu­al­ly cre­at­ing jobs. Republicans know that if the econ­o­my con­tin­ue to improve they could kiss their chances of unseat­ing Obama goodbye.

Interestingly, the talk­ing heads in the media, and specif­i­cal­ly those on the round the clock cable net­works, fail to point out to the American peo­ple, the dan­ger­ous game of brinks­man­ship Republicans were play­ing, and con­tin­ue to play with their future, and that of their chil­dren. This reck­lessnes sole­ly to advance their rad­i­cal agen­da of demo­niz­ing Obama, and enact­ing the agen­da of the super rich, big banks , and insur­ance companies.

As was antic­i­pat­ed the repub­li­can hate mon­gers were out first thing sat­ur­day morn­ing with their pre­pared talk­ing points .

Here’s what “bring on default”[ nit wit] Michelle Bachman had to say ”

This pres­i­dent has destroyed the cred­it rat­ing of the United States,” “I call on the pres­i­dent to seek the imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and to sub­mit a plan with a list of cuts to bal­ance the bud­get this year, turn our econ­o­my around and put Americans back to work.”

Missing in action [snake oil sales­man] Mitt Romney:

America’s cred­it­wor­thi­ness just became the lat­est casu­al­ty in President Obama’s failed record of lead­er­ship on the econ­o­my,” Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in a state­ment. “Standard & Poor’s rat­ing down­grade is a deeply trou­bling indi­ca­tor of our country’s decline under President Obama. His failed poli­cies have led to high unem­ploy­ment, sky­rock­et­ing deficits, and now, the unprece­dent­ed loss of our nation’s prized AAA cred­it rating

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum :

I under­stand the U.S. Treasury is going back to Standard and Poor’s to say that a two tril­lion-dol­lar math­e­mat­i­cal error by S&P con­tributed to the down­grade,” “So, in addi­tion to blam­ing President Bush for all of its prob­lems, now the White House is blam­ing S&P – but this hap­pened on the President’s watch – and he has to deal with it.”

Former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman :

We need new lead­er­ship in Washington com­mit­ted to fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, a bal­anced bud­get, and job-friend­ly poli­cies to get America work­ing again,”.

One whack job after anoth­er, they trot­ted out the same refrain it’ s Obama’s fault !

Did John Huntsman think the pres­i­den­t’s poli­cies were fis­cal­ly wrong and hos­tile to job cre­ation ? And if so what does it say about him who opt­ed to work for the pres­i­dent in an Ambassadorial role in chi­na, should­n’t Huntsman have stood on prin­ci­ple and not accept that appointment ?

The real­i­ty is, this prob­lem of a debt ceil­ing was one man­u­fac­tured by the far right with­in the repub­li­can par­ty, the wing nuts that pushed even rea­son­able mem­bers of that par­ty into hid­ing, scared that they may be seen as com­pro­mis­ing with Barack Obama .This band of uncom­pro­mis­ing zealots went to Washington with what they see as a man­date to stop spend­ing, of course the spend­ing of George Bush was not a prob­lem while he was dri­ving the econ­o­my off the brink, it became a prob­lem when Obama need­ed mon­ey to stop the destruction.

Tea par­ty activists in Congress, most of whom have nev­er held elect­ed office, and most­ly who do not have any alle­giance to the repub­li­can estab­lish­ment of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell do not under­stand the mean­ing of Governance. What they under­stand is the vapid fun­da­men­tal­ist dog­ma that is the heart of the Tea Party.

Interestingly ‚despite all of the activ­i­ties and the pre­dictable fall­out of this artif­i­cal cri­sis, there is real­ly no mes­sage com­ing out from Democrats. For most of Barack Obama’s Presidency , even when democ­rats had the Senate , House and , the White House repub­li­cans seemed to get every­thing they want­ed , essen­tial­ly gov­ern­ing from the minor­i­ty. Under Bush there was no short­age of talk­ing heads on Television repeat­ing the same lines and talk­ing points.

Conversely Obama seem unable to get any­one from with­in his own par­ty to speak up on his behalf , with th excep­tion of Debbie Wasserman Shultz the head of the Democratic National com­mit­tee. the silent demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, to include the black cau­cus are ren­dered impo­tent by the tea par­ty, that has defined them as always , tax and spend democrats.

There is also a bur­geon­ing cadre of black repub­li­cans who seem to all par­rot the same anti-Obama dis­dain , some are in talk radio oth­ers call them­selves repub­li­can strate­gists, of course there is one in the this new repub­li­can con­gress, this brand of self hat­ing[ uncle toms] seem­ing­ly do not under­stand the con­flict inher­ent in, ” black-republican”

Michael Steele found out how much he was worth to them after they took the House of Represantatives , he was gone, kicked to the curb.

Under no oth­er cur­cum­stance would a black man be appoint­ed head of the repub­li­can nation­al com­mitte. This was a obvi­ous and trans­par­ent counter-weight to the President. They want­ed to make sure all of the vit­ri­olic poi­son com­ing from them was con­duit­ed through Steele (a black man) , with Steele they were insu­lat­ed from charges of racism . So they held their col­lec­tive noses, once he achieved their objec­tive he was out of there.

What is clear, is that repub­li­cans fig­ure with a grow­ing econ­o­my, Barack Obama is unbeat­able. They have gam­bled on the high stakes wager they made: dis­rupt the econ­o­my, cre­ate fear , anx­i­ety and trep­i­da­tion- that is their tick­et into the White House. So far they seem to be win­ning that strat­e­gy, hands down.

The President missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell the American people:

The debt was run up by Congress before his time.

All of his pre­de­ces­sors have had the debt increased on their watch as a mat­ter of course.

The debt ceil­ing was increased on his watch, to stave off finan­cial collapse.

Point out the dan­ger­ous game of brinks­man­ship repub­li­cans are play­ing with the country.

Raising the ceil­ing was nev­er a prob­lem under any of his predecessors.

Ask the peo­ple why they thought it was a prob­lem on his watch.

President Obama con­tin­ues to lead from behind, he con­tin­ues to oper­ate under a false premise of com­pro­mise with repub­li­cans. Unless he wakes up from this three and one half-year eupho­ria from win­ning the pres­i­den­cy, and start to Govern, he will join the ranks of the unem­ployed pret­ty soon.

mike beck­les:

have your say: