http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/07/sp-bond-rater-its-the-debt-stupid/
posted at 12:00 pm on August 7, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
What caused the United States to lose its AAA rating for the first time in 94 years, a rating that withstood two world wars, the Great Depression and (most of) the Great Recession, and a costly military buildup that bankrupted and demolished our Cold War foe, the Soviet Union, without a direct shot fired? Was it the dastardly Tea Party, with its demands for fiscal sanity and a solution to an oncoming tsunami of entitlement liabilities?
According to the man who rates sovereign debt for the agency that downgraded the US, not really:
The head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings, David Beers told “Fox News Sunday” he did not expect “that much impact” when global markets open on Monday due to what he called a “mild deterioration” in the U.S. credit standing to AA-plus from top-tier AAA. …
He also said the downgrade announced on Friday was not due to the budget positions of any political party and that on any future agreement, “We think credibility would mean any agreement would command support from both political parties.”
So a lack of consensus was part of the problem for S&P. But consensus about what?
Beers called the U.S. Treasury Department’s criticism of the credit rating agency’s analysis a “complete misrepresentation.” Even with the debt limit agreement passed by Congress, he said, “the underlying debt burden of the U.S. is rising and will continue to rise over the next decade.”
posted at 12:00 pm on August 7, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
What caused the United States to lose its AAA rating for the first time in 94 years, a rating that withstood two world wars, the Great Depression and (most of) the Great Recession, and a costly military buildup that bankrupted and demolished our Cold War foe, the Soviet Union, without a direct shot fired? Was it the dastardly Tea Party, with its demands for fiscal sanity and a solution to an oncoming tsunami of entitlement liabilities?
According to the man who rates sovereign debt for the agency that downgraded the US, not really:
The head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings, David Beers told “Fox News Sunday” he did not expect “that much impact” when global markets open on Monday due to what he called a “mild deterioration” in the U.S. credit standing to AA-plus from top-tier AAA. …
He also said the downgrade announced on Friday was not due to the budget positions of any political party and that on any future agreement, “We think credibility would mean any agreement would command support from both political parties.”
So a lack of consensus was part of the problem for S&P. But consensus about what?
Beers called the U.S. Treasury Department’s criticism of the credit rating agency’s analysis a “complete misrepresentation.” Even with the debt limit agreement passed by Congress, he said, “the underlying debt burden of the U.S. is rising and will continue to rise over the next decade.”
