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:

How unprece­dent­ed would default be? The United States has nev­er failed to repay a debt in its his­to­ry. But it has twice altered the repay­ment terms, notes a study by Carmen M. Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth S. Rogoff of Harvard University. In 1790, when the infant repub­lic took over the states’ colo­nial-era debts, it deferred some inter­est for 10 years. A more per­ti­nent case occurred dur­ing the Great Depression. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt deval­ued the dol­lar by 41 per­cent against gold. This helped end the vicious cycle of bank fail­ures, defla­tion and default that had wors­ened the eco­nom­ic down­turn, but it cre­at­ed anoth­er dilem­ma. Since the Civil War, bor­row­ers in the United States, includ­ing the gov­ern­ment, had rou­tine­ly issued bonds that allowed the hold­er to demand repay­ment in gold or its dol­lar equiv­a­lent, based on the price of gold when the bond was issued. Devaluation would have dra­mat­i­cal­ly raised, in dol­lar terms, the bur­den of repay­ment. So in 1933, Congress repealed the gold clause, a deci­sion the Supreme Court upheld in 1935.

at: http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​0​9​/​A​R​2​0​0​9​0​1​0​9​0​2​3​2​5​.​h​tml

So as this new dead­line on the debt ceil­ing looms, we are left won­der­ing what will hap­pen ? The President has already com­mit­ted to giv­ing more than most Democrats are com­fort­able with . Democrats are not pleased when they con­sid­er what the details of those con­ces­sions could poten­tial­ly mean to the lives of actu­al peo­ple who ben­e­fit from Medicare,Medicaid and Social Security.Americans whom have worked and con­tributed, with the promise that when they retired those enti­tle­ments would be there.

President Obama is forced into a cor­ner either way. On the Morning after his elec­tion Republican awoke to the real­i­ty that a black man would be occu­py­ing the white house, they decid­ed they would do every­thing in their pow­er to destroy his pres­i­den­cy, even if it includ­ed destroy­ing the coun­try . It is evi­dent the repub­li­cans who wrap them­selves in the American flag, pre­tend­ing to hav­ing a monop­oly on patri­o­tism, did not care of the con­se­quences to the coun­try .What mat­tered was that Barack Obama has to be stopped.

Their High Priest ‚the Ultra right-wing wind bag, Rush Limbaugh artic­u­lat­ed the way for­ward for the repub­li­can minor­i­ty. they want­ed Obama to fail, Senators , Congressmen and women com­menced to par­rot that refrain ‚when some­one dared to point out to them that it would mean the fail­ure of the coun­try, they argue that the President’s agen­da was so lib­er­al , so un-American that it would be a good thing for those poli­cies to fail because if enact­ed it would be tan­ta­mount to the Destruction of America.

Those were the same argu­ments made when FDR was enact­ing his agen­da, the same argu­ments made when Slavery was abolished,On every occur­rence of a pro­gres­sive agen­da that includ­ed the peo­ple , repub­li­cans resort to fear mon­ger­ing and race bait­ing to scare the pop­u­la­tion into dissent.

In Obama’s case they chose a path that was trav­elled before , they sought to make Obama different.

The car­i­ca­ture and the car­toon depic­tions at the tea part ral­lies were rem­i­nis­cent of a time that most intel­li­gent peo­ple thought were behind America. They con­spired to de legit­imize his pres­i­den­cy on the argu­ments he was born out­side of America, any­one under­stand­ing how American Government works , under­stands the tiered sys­tem of clear­ance that obtains, in order to move up the fed­er­al ladder.

At every step seri­ous back­ground checks are done . Does any­one in their right mind believe that under any cir­cum­stance, America would allow an imposter, an ille­git­i­mate Manchurian can­di­date to occu­py the white house ?

The tea par­ty peo­ple embraced this fal­la­cy and to this day they con­tin­ue with their racist igno­rant cam­paign to make the President an outsider.

Unfortunately Barack Obama con­tin­ues to smile with them as if he real­ly believes they want to work or com­pro­mise .Even Republicans with com­mon sense, which is an oxy­moron these days , are afraid to men­tion the word com­pro­mise, when it is men­tioned in the same sen­tence with the name Barack Obama.

I nev­er thought I would see the day when Orrin Hatch of Utah would be viewed as a mod­er­ate. Such is the puri­ty test with­in what used to be the repub­li­can par­ty. That Party is now dom­i­nat­ed by racist ide­o­logues ‚who wrap them­selves in the American flag, pre­tend­ing to care about fis­cial pru­dence, a fis­cal matu­rit­ry that came about as as soon as Obama took office.

The Tea par­ty cared noth­ing about fis­cal proper­i­ty when Bush 43^rd was President. after inher­it­ing a bal­anced bud­get from Clinton it took him two years to squan­der over a tril­lion dol­lars of sur­plus, start­ed two wars and put the American econ­o­my into a near depression.

Obama is still grap­pling with that mess today. The hyp­ocrites who call them­selves tea par­ty patri­ots did not care then.They care because a black man is pres­i­dent and no one wants to call it what it is .I nev­er dreamed I would see the day when Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Orrin Hatch of Utah would be seen as moderates.Such is the lit­mus test ‚that once mod­er­ates, such as John McCain has been forced to the far right ‚toward the fringe, to ensure their polit­i­cal sur​vival​.One thing is cer­tain we know what repub­li­cans stand for .Democrats could learn a les­son or two about prin­ci­ples from them.

What well think­ing per­sons here, and around the world real­ized, was that the flames of American big­otry and racism were not extin­guished, they were mere­ly reduced to smoul­der­ing embers cam­ou­flaged with ashes.

It seemed that the President was some­how still drunk with the dis­be­lief of his ascen​den​cy​.It appeared he believed Republicans would be pre­pared to work with him , the first African-American President.

It seem the President is delu­sion­al in his belief that the Republican Party would want him a black man ‚to have any notable suc­cess to point to. It was evi­dent to any­one watch­ing ‚repub­li­cans were going to sub­vert every­thing they could , effec­tive­ly run­ning out the clock on his presidency.

President Obama, despite a major­i­ty in the house and senat,was unable to gar­ner any sup­port from repub­li­cans, for his sig­na­ture accom­plish­ment ‚the health care bill dubbed Obama-care, Democrats squab­bled amongst them­selves as they have always done , a move which sucked the good­will Americans had for the new Administration.The result of the dis­af­fec­tion was evi­dent in the midterm elec­tions, a dis­af­fec­tion Obama called a shellacking.

Mark you, the President did not yet artic­u­late a way for­ward , he had just tak­en office when the anti Obama onslaught commenced.But let’s get back to the issue at hand for a sec­ond , President Obama went into the dis­cus­sions mak­ing give­aways, some­thing Former President GW Bush would nev­er do. President Bush famous­ly stat­ed he nev­er nego­ti­at­ed with him­self, this was evi­dent through­out his two terms in office, on every issue he ram­rod Democrats, herd­ing them to sign onto his agen­da, if they resist­ed he would take to the air­waves and label them obstruc­tion­ists, lit­er­al­ly mak­ing them look un-American.

Tom Daschle stood in the way of the rad­i­cal right-wing assault on the Constitution ‚they made sure that all the mon­ey his oppo­nent need­ed was made avail­able to him. They poured untold mil­lions of dol­lars into South Dakota and suc­ceed­ed in unseat­ing Daschle, this was unprece­dent­ed in recent times, there was an un-writ­ten rule that the President would not go to the home state of the Majority leader to cam­paign against him.

Bush did that ‚unashamed and un apolo­getic. Democrats were rail­road­ed into sign­ing onto the Patriot ACT after September 11 at risk of seem­ing to sup­port ter­ror­ists if they dared even ques­tion what was in the ACT. hon­est mem­bers of the Democratic Party have con­fessed they nev­er even both­ered to read the volu­mi­nous Bill the Bush Administration’s Lawyers gave them , they just vot­ed Aye! Rights and Civil Liberties be dammed.

So where does this President find him­self? he made mam­moth offers to the Republicans,they slapped his hand away.They want con­ces­sions that would be so far-reach­ing there would be wide­spread civ­il war in the Democratic Party, a move that would effec­tive­ly seal the pres­i­den­t’s fate.

On the oth­er side of the coin if the coun­try goes into default , it will be a scar­let let­ter on his Presidency, Republicans cal­cu­lates that either way Obama looses.

There are numer­ous argu­ments being made detail­ing the con­se­quences to the econ­o­my in the event the Nation defaults on its debts, new­ly installed IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Sunday, quote ” there would be real nasty con­se­quences to the glob­al econ­o­my if the United States default­ed on its finan­cial oblig­a­tions, end quote.

Despite these pro­jec­tions and all of the assess­ments that have being in the pub­lic domain from qual­i­fied Economists and oth­ers, Republicans in the US Senate and the right-wing nut cas­es in the house, elect­ed under the tea par­ty ban­ner, con­tin­ue to play polit­i­cal brinks­man­ship with the American and glob­al Economy.

They have made a deci­sion that Ideological puri­ty is far more impor­tant to them that leav­ing a liv­able coun­try to their children.

mike beck­les:

have your say;

This is the sec­ond in a series of blogs I will write on the ques­tion of whether it was worth it for Jamaica to have gained its Independence from Britain, its for­mer colo­nial occupier .

The first short blog was mere­ly a ques­tion that dealt briefly with the hunger and hard­ship issue which is so much a part of dai­ly life in Jamaica, I was almost moved to tears on read­ing the com­ments of an elder­ly lady in the Jamaican Gleaner, on the occa­sion of the approach of the last hurricane.She told the on site reporter that she was only able to pur­chase a can­dle and lighter, she was unable to pur­chase a sin­gle item of food , or even a gal­lon of drink­ing water , the most basic of neces­si­ties that are required to sus­tain life dur­ing and after a nat­ur­al disaster.

This par­tic­u­lar lady touched my heart as I remem­bered the after­math of hur­ri­cane Gilbert and the des­per­a­tion that ensued, when drink­ing water was a scarce com­mod­i­ty, most of us end­ed up in Cherry gar­dens , lin­ing up in that com­mu­ni­ty, at a life sav­ing artery of water that seemed to have come out of nowhere​.It is an accept­ed real­i­ty that the very poor will always be here with us , or at least we are resigned to those realities,Jesus is report­ed in the Bible to have accept­ed those real­i­ties when he famous­ly told his dis­ci­ples quote“the poor will always be here with us ‚“end quote,but does it mean that peo­ple should go to bed with­out food, or as is in the case of this lady, fac­ing an impend­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ter ‚should she face it with­out any sur­vival tools in place?.

You may ask , Mike what the hell does all this have to do with Jamaica’s Independence?, well, I think it is impor­tant for us to talk about these things with­in the con­text of where we were 50 years ago , as against where we are today , almost a half a cen­tu­ry after we were forced to let go of the prover­bial apron strings. I feel it is impor­tant for us to stop for a while and mea­sure the progress we have made, if any , iden­ti­fy what we did right, what we did wrong, and chart a course for­ward com­men­su­rate with the chang­ing real­i­ties of this new century.

The result of a recent study pub­lished in the Jamaica dai­ly Gleaner indi­cat­ed that a major­i­ty of Jamaicans are of the view they were bet­ter off under the Colonial dic­tates of Britain.That posi­tion has to be looked at with­in the con­text of where each indi­vid­ual is in their life ‚and the con­text in which the per­son answered the ques­tion, say for exam­ple on the press­ing issue of crime and vio­lence, it would be pre­ma­ture to jump on any­one who argue they were bet­ter off under colo­nial rule, from that perspective.

In the Old Testament the chil­dren of Israel report­ed­ly rebelled against Moses and his broth­er Aaron ‚in the desert when they had no water, even though they had wit­nessed the mir­a­cles God per­formed in order to release them from the Pharaoh’s clutch­es, they were instead guid­ed by their imme­di­ate needs , which was tan­ta­mount to , yes we saw all of that but we are humans and we have no water,The chil­dren of Israel rebelled over water , food, and every­thing they could com­plain about , and like Jamaicans of today ‚they argued they were bet­ter off under the Pharaoh’s oppres­sive rule, choos­ing to for­get hun­dreds of years of abuse in order to sat­is­fy the urgent needs of now.

Well for those of us who insist the Bible is an out­dat­ed book of fables, I am not a PhD, nei­ther am I an archeologist,not a his­to­ri­an, not even a the­olo­gian so I can present no sci­en­tif­ic data to back up my Biblical quotes, how­ev­er if you are one who scoff at Jesus freaks like me, there may still be a val­ue in the sto­ry of the chil­dren of Israel ‘trek from Egypt, to the land of Palestine , a jour­ney which should have tak­en them 11 days took them 40 year, because they kept their eyes on the past rather than embrace the prospect of the future, they even­tu­al­ly lost their way .Subsequently not one who had set out from Egypt set foot in the land of Palestine.

One does not have to sac­ri­fice his or her intel­lect or sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion, in order to appre­ci­ate the sim­ple par­al­lels that are inher­ent in the two sto­ries . Until next time.

mike beck­les:

have your say: