Alert: US Credit Downgrade imminent

The United States has a AAA credit rating with Standard & Poor's (S&P), and has had for as long as I can remember. If that were to change, the impact would be tremendous. Well, guess what. It may well soon change.

S&P downgraded their outlook for the US to negative, which signals that they may downgrade our credit rating sometime within the next two years or so.
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-LJUNIC1A1I4H01-75G3S197SRUKS7V58HLP1GVHC1

Standard & Poor’s put a “negative” outlook on the AAA credit rating of the U.S., citing a “material risk” the nation’s leaders will fail to deal with rising budget deficits and debt.

“We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013,” New York-based S&P said today in a report. “If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns.”

It's coming, people. Both political parties are in denial as to the extent of the problem. The proof is that the Democrats still want to spend uncontrollably, PresBo wants fake budget cuts, and the Republicans are willing to take 20 years or so to reach a "balanced" budget.


To illustrate the extent of Obama's denial, his response to this reality was more political posturing.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110418/pl_nm/us_usa_budget_outlook

"We believe S&P's negative outlook underestimates the ability of America's leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation," said Mary Miller, Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Markets.

And kids all across the nation believe the Easter Bunny is real. Exactly what in the recent past has happened to give the President such confidence? The Republicans came out with a budget plan that vastly under-shot on the solution front, being nowhere near enough to reasonably deal with the problem, and PresBo responded by accusing them of wanting Senior citizens and sick children to die! Far from trying to bring the parties together, PresBo is actively working to make cooperation more difficult.

I'm sorry, but neither party is showing any sign of taking this situation seriously, or making plans to effectively deal with it in a reasonable period of time. By focusing on "the deficit," they are ignoring the bigger problem... the debt. Twenty years from now is when we should be almost finished retiring our national debt, as opposed to maybe just getting started paying it down.

Balance the budget, please, and sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the first consequences will be felt shortly.