What does it mean if you have a poor credit rating? For one thing, it means there is doubt about your ability to repay money that you borrow. The lower your score goes, the more doubt there is.
A good credit score, by contrast, often means you have paid your bills on time, and that you have avoided excessive debt.
Those principles apply not only to individuals but to governments. The government of Greece, for instance, has borrowed and spent its way to financial catastrophe. So there has been understandable hesitation on the part of other European countries about lending Greece more money.
Fortunately, the U.S. government is not in quite the horrible condition that Greece is in.
But it was still a shock back in August when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in our history. That followed an earlier downgrade by Egan-Jones Ratings Co., and expressions of serious concern by two other ratings agencies: Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.