And you thought it was bad news when Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating last year for the first time in history.
Stay tuned for a while, and that credit hit may turn out to have been small potatoes.
It didn't get a lot of media play, but the other day, S&P affirmed its 2011 decision to reduce our country's AAA credit rating to AA+, with a negative outlook. Last year's downgrade -- predictably denounced by the touchy Obama administration -- came in large measure because S&P did not see any serious action by Washington to deal with our catastrophic debt. (We owe around $16 trillion, but who's counting?)
It gets worse, though.
S&P said it sees a 20 percent chance the United States will slip back into recession. And it says the political shenanigans in Washington and the fiscal dangers the country now is facing could mean an additional credit-rating downgrade two years from now. What dangers might those be? Well, one of them is still the unaddressed national debt, of course.
Yet there is no indication that the president and adequate majorities in both houses of Congress are taking the debt crisis seriously. Heck, the president is telling European nations they need to pump still more government money into their own crumbling economies. Why on earth should we think he has the faintest interest in cutting spending here?
Maybe we should give a different president a chance to do so.
By Washington? Try by the Republican party, as specifically mentioned in the report.
Not that it's meant a damn thing, or that you should trust their ratings.
But actually, yes, those ratings companies agree, austerity doesn't work. Maybe you should try a less selective reading?
How can anyone believe that increasing debt will eventually or ever decrease the national debt? The pain can only be delayed but will increase proportionally with each delay. Supply side economics is a term invented by those desiring to add cost to the producers which any reasonably intelligent person would realize adds to consumer cost for purchased goods and services. A hidden or fools tax as described by some. Increased personal income taxes plus eliminating deductions, reductions, credits etc. are essential actions being avoided due to the political ramifications, loss of votes to keep the position of power. Avoiding bankruptcy or the impact of excessive spending is not as complicated as some in office would have people believe. The truth of the state of the nation is painful to hear and even more painful to address.
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