the Milwaukee stop on the Tea Party Express' Wisconsin
tour, as it is being held in a town in the outer-most ring of
suburbs, and bus service out there is sparse on weekdays
and non-existent on weekends. But with what I learned late
last night on the news, this windfall of time is being put to
excellent use. I am pained to inform you, my beloved readers,
that our country's credit rating has --- for the first time ever
--- been downgraded by Standard & Poors. Our nation had
long enjoyed a triple-A credit rating on our debentures; this
meant that our ability to borrow money on the international
debt market has been easy, because of the confidence that
other countries have had in our ability to repay the loans that
they would make to us. But those days are, at least for the
time being, in the past; we now have a rating of AA+, the
second-highest rating that S&P gives, after AAA.
In a statement late Friday, S&P explained "The downgrade
reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that
Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls
short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize
the government's medium-term debt dynamics." In other
words, S&P believes that after the most prodigious spending
binge in the history of the world, the U.S. government has
crafted what is essentially a non-plan for dealing with the
resultant record-setting debt incurred during this binge.
From what I have seen of the debt ceiling-raising pact,
I sadly must concur. In the coming week I shall give you,
my wonderful readers, my thoughts on that measure, after
I have had the opportunity to do a little more research into
the matter.
I will, however, say this for now: The 2012 elections can't
come soon enough!
MEM
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