S&P has downgraded U.S.A credit rating from AAA to AA+

[xXAsherahXx]

I kind of saw this coming. Hopefully people of the USA start being more interested in their own government, and finally have enough sense to stop supporting the tea party. Honestly, people in their right minds should never support the tea party.

What? People here support the Tea Party? Most people in America hate the fucking Tea Party, along with the other 2 parties. I can't stand that the negotiations in my country have taken so damn long for fucking no reason.

We have raised the debt ceiling over one hundred times without a peep from the senate or congress. It's all about who has leverage in this fucking country, not the actual people living here.

Most polls about the subject (on both democratic and republican news programs) show that Americans are absolutely fed up with the damn government. Myself included. God damn do I hate this bi-partisan system.

 

[poppabaggins]

while not directly related what i never got is why you Americans only allow yourselves to have opinions in blocks? you can either support the Republicans or the Democrats in all their ideas or pick one that is very important to you and stick with that. Where is the choice to want low taxes and keep weird religious ideas out of schools?
also why does your country suck so much at collecting and spending taxes?

It's because we have an incredibly flawed two-party system. Third parties don't stand a chance so partisan-based shit like this happens. Hopefully this can bring about an actual change to our political system, but I'm not going to get optimistic.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I blame 2 things for this. (Congress, and the president... maybe 3, I blame courts as well.)

The entire U.S government. We should remove them all, and redo a few things in the system. Kick everyone out of office, start out with a blank slate, make it COMPLETELY ILLEGAL to change your oppenion via bribe. You have a set salery, and there can be no outside company that has a say on bills, only singilized citizens.

 

[Korolev]

I've just been watching some Bloomberg TV - they aren't panicking nearly as much as the other News channels are, mostly because they know a bit about economics. Again - Standard and Poor's aren't the only ratings. The US still produces 14 Trillion dollars a year, or there-abouts and that's not going to go away. Job data just came back, and your unemployment is down to 9.1% - still high, but going down.

This will not destroy the entire world - or at least it shouldn't. Investors are by nature, very jittery people, and if they get spooked they might precipitate another crisis. But that's unlikely. For the record, the massive sell off on Thursday was mostly triggered by the crisis in the EU: Italy is massively, massively debt ridden, Spain looks pretty shaky, Portugal is a mess, and Greece has so many problems that I doubt it'll remain a developed nation for much longer. Ireland isn't looking too rosy either.

But China is still making stuff. IBM and GE and Visa and Mastercard and Toyota, they're all still there. As bad as 07-08 was, we're mostly all still here, right? Some of us lost jobs, some us had cuts to our pay-checks, but most of us didn't spontaneously combust and our nations didn't go up in a wall of flames!

Bad economic times come and go. Capitalism works with cycles - cycles of boom and bust. Busts are essential to the capitalist system because the booms are always founded on too much optimism. It's always been a case in which people over-estimate the value of stuff, then there's a correction, which results in the bust, but then the next boom happens again. That's the way it's always worked, that's the way it's always gonna work. If this is your first "Big Crash" then yes, it can look pretty scary. But just look back a bit and you'll see that this sort of thing has happened many times before (except the AA+ rating, but as I remind you, S&P is only one agency).

My sympathies go out to anyone who has been genuinely affected by this crisis. A lot of good people lost a lot of money today. Many people here in Australia have lost a lot of money on their superannuation because of this (a superannuation is essentially the same thing as a 401K in the US). But it's not the end of the world, the US hasn't suddenly started to collapse in on itself and even in the WORST case scenario (people stop lending to the USA entirely), the US will still continue to function - it can just raise taxes after all.

 

[uzo]

Funny ... there's a survivalist thread running in tandem to this one. Good luck, USA. It's gonna be a shitstorm, but the fireworks will be FANTASTIC.

 

[DarkRyter]

Hurray! Oh wait, that's a bad thing right? I know you Americans are in a bad debt crisis, but can you give me the laymans version?

Well, with the downgrade of our bonds, that means loaning America money has become a considerably less reliable investment.

Our budget unhealthily depends on people buying those bonds, thus loaning America money.

It's an indicator that we are drifting farther and farther away from being able to pay off the money we owe, running the risk of defaulting on our loans.

Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure what happens, having only a basic economics education.

 

[BlindChance]

To be fair, guys? Put some blame on Standard & Poor's, too. They made this decision, after all. And so far, there's been no indication, none, that the US might not be able to repay their loans on schedule. Yes, the US political system is a mess right now. But even if the debt ceiling hadn't been raised, that would have meant that the American government and numerous programs would have shut down. It didn't mean they'd have defaulted on loans.

Overall, the main blame for this particular thing, I place on S&P. They're calling this wrong.

HAHAHA you think it's the tea party's fault for holding freaking rallies? Do I even need to point out that a central theme of those rallies was often financial responsibility?

Question: Do you believe there is ever a good reason to raise taxes?

 

[McNinja]

Thank you tea party! You always know what's best for the American people. The CEO's hoarding billions should be completely untouched while the price of living continues to soar for the rest of America. And thank you inept monkeys of the American government for completely failing to provide an even remotely efficient plan to fix our growing debt. Oh well, we should just blame Obama.

The Teaparty isn't to blame. This has been a couple decades in the making, and while it isn't entirely Obama's fault, the government as it is is a piece of shit and needs to be sorted out. Remember, Americans, we voted for these people.

 

[WanderingFool]

Awesome... Im pretty sure this is why the founding fathers didnt intend for permanet political parties.

 

[manaman]

How many trillions of dollars does the American national debt come to? I doubt anyone else could get so far in and remain a country.

Rather then thinking about the debt as a solid number, it's easier to think of it as a percentage of GDP, it accounts for the different sizes of economies in different countries. As really how much they can get in debt has little to do with how many people are in the country, or how much land it has but the size of it's economy. The US has the largest economy in the world. It's only a tiny bit smaller then the combined economy of the European Union.

It's actually a modern trend for growing economies to have low debt to GPD ratios (China), which isn't a sign of stability in the country. It's that the country is producing a surplus in taxes that they invest in wealthier or more stable countries. Stable countries tend to have GPD to debt ratios that are closer to 1 to 1. The US GPD to debt ratio has the debt at 76% of it's current GDP. Which wouldn't be a problem with historic growth of the economy. Which actually makes it's debt a bit healthier (in some regards) then several other Westernized countries. Where it's really a problem is the stagnation and the fact that the recession is becoming so drawn out. The problem is the economy isn't growing to cover the spending.

That is really just part of the problem, the goverment has become entitled. The spending is out of control, and their is no plan to reign it back in to realistic levels.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

Whatever happened to doing the damned job?

Money, power and people hungry for both. It seems almost unavoidable in politics, more-so in the States it would also seem.

 

[McNinja]

To be fair, guys? Put some blame on Standard & Poor's, too. They made this decision, after all. And so far, there's been no indication, none, that the US might not be able to repay their loans on schedule. Yes, the US political system is a mess right now. But even if the debt ceiling hadn't been raised, that would have meant that the American government and numerous programs would have shut down. It didn't mean they'd have defaulted on loans.

Overall, the main blame for this particular thing, I place on S&P. They're calling this wrong.

HAHAHA you think it's the tea party's fault for holding freaking rallies? Do I even need to point out that a central theme of those rallies was often financial responsibility?

Question: Do you believe there is ever a good reason to raise taxes?

Answer: Reagan's "Reaganomics" involved lowering taxes, mainly the taxes of the very wealthy. If those taxes went back up a few percent, I don't think anyone would mind. The rest of us however, do not wished to be taxed anymore.

Also S&P only adjusts the rating based on what their criteria for what constitutes a AAA rating. The US did not meet that criteria.

 

[BlindChance]

That is really just part of the problem, the goverment has become entitled. The spending is out of control, and their is no plan to reign it back in to realistic levels.

I'd disagree with that. Apart from in recent years (where it was inflated in an effort to stimulate the economy) it's been going down as a percentage of GDP for the last 30 years. Even under Bush, spending increased... but still to a lower level than, say, under Bush Snr.

Now, the stimulus is a good topic of discussion, but to claim it reflects a wider ongoing trend of spending out of control seems unlikely to me.

 

[wilsontheterrible]

I know some in the anti-U.S wing are pleased with the idea of our debt being downgraded but the ramifications are going to be felt the world over. Pull a cornerstone out of a building and the entire structure starts to go. U.S bonds are one of the most traded objects on the planet and account for trillions in the global economy. Many developing nations depend on their ownership of U.S bonds as a stable source of income and millions of people the world over use them to supplement their individual incomes.

Mark my words, markets are going to get ugly the world over so gloat while you can, nobody's going to be laughing at opening bell.

 

[VGC USpartan VS]

Hurray! Oh wait, that's a bad thing right? I know you Americans are in a bad debt crisis, but can you give me the laymans version?

Let me put it this way. We, as in the west... this includes Britain, are one step closer to being run-over by the Chinese.

 

[aashell13]

while not directly related what i never got is why you Americans only allow yourselves to have opinions in blocks? you can either support the Republicans or the Democrats in all their ideas or pick one that is very important to you and stick with that. Where is the choice to want low taxes and keep weird religious ideas out of schools?
also why does your country suck so much at collecting and spending taxes?

blame the first-past-the-post voting scheme and party-exclusive primaries along with the 24hr insta-news cycle which allows activists constant supervision over the mechanics of government. Those three together create a climate in which it is nigh impossible for a politician to maintain his office after failing to toe the party line.

 

[dagens24]

100% tea party's fault.

 

[Elementlmage]

It was conservatives who wanted a war with Iraq over WMDs that didn't exist. It was the conservatives who pushed for more and more and more and more and more and more defence spending, crying out that the Democrats were "Yella-bellies" because they cut the massively unneeded F-22 raptor jet. It was the Conservatives who originally pushed for the bail out under G.W Bush in 07-08.

"We cannot allow a mine shaft technology gap!"

God I laughed my ass off when I saw that movie for the first time, because I immediately thought of all the rhetoric surrounding the F-22 program.

The thing is, we really do need the fighter. But, not so much the fighter, as the idea of the fighter. That fighter is the sum result of decades of scientific endeavor, that everyone thought was useless. It proves, that somewhere down the line, even the craziest scientific notion or bit of hyper-expensive impractical technology WILL have a use.

But, we also need the fighters themselves. However, we don't need a whole fleet of them, as they would be too damned expensive! The Russians actually had a brilliant idea when faced with their potential bill when faced with the Su-47 and Su-50 projects. They have a reduced fleet of Gen 5 fighters(stealth fighters) and augment and support that fleet with Gen 4 +++ fighters(essentially non-stealth fighters made with modern tech) The Gen 4+++ fighters (Su-35, look them up, they are sexy as hell) are perfectly capable of engaging Gen 5 fighters, they just have lower survivability. However, their increased numbers and ordnance loads give them a huge advantage. The difference, is that the Su-35 costs ~$60 million and the Su-50 costs ~$150 million.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

That's it? I was expecting raising the debt ceiling to bring us down to an A or B or something. Come back when something that actually matters happens.

...You have no idea how big of a deal this is, do you?

@CosmicCommander: I love this rhetoric that "we're all at fault". No, we are NOT ALL EQUALLY AT FAULT. The republicans were the ones that decided that combining the talk of the debt ceiling with talk of the budget was a good idea. The republicans were the ones who refused to budge an inch in the budget debates (and ended up getting everything they wanted in the end). The republicans were the ones who decided that cutting taxes while America was in the middle of two wars (this has NEVER happened; neither America being in two simultaneous ground wars nor cutting taxes during a war; you can hopefully figure out why), taxes aimed primarily at the rich, was a good idea.

We are NOT equally at fault. If you wish to claim that because the democratic party refused to sit down and take a gigantic spiked dildo up its ass because the republicans were willing to hold the country hostage in a dangerous game of chicken, they are equally at fault, then fine. Keep believing that. But no amount of belief will make it true.

Thank you. The platforms of the two parties are as different as they can be; the problem is that while the republicans are a fairly unified front and are willing and able to do whatever they need to get their policies enacted, the democrats are a coalition of a lot of different people -- a significant minority of them are "blue dog" democrats, which basically means they're republicans who registered with the wrong party. This makes it incredibly difficult to get the democrats to all toe the party line, whereas the republicans have no issues with it. Add in the fact that the current crop of democrats fetishizes "compromise" to the point of constant capitulation, and you'll see why our country has pulled so far to the right in recent years. Mark my words, if the republicans were in uncontested power, things would be even worse than they are.