This - from no less than my favorite source for journalistic integrity!!
Amid criticism on downgrade of U.S., S.&P. fires back
Agency skewers debt ceiling 'debacle,' warns that more downgrades may come
By Nelson D. Schwartz and Eric Dash
The New York Times
updated 8/6/2011
A day after Standard & Poor’s took the unprecedented step of downgrading the creditworthiness of the United States government, the ratings agency offered a full-throated defense of its decision, calling the bitter stand-off between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling a “debacle,” and warning that further downgrades may lie ahead.
In an unusual Saturday conference call with reporters, senior S.& P. officials insisted the ratings firm hadn’t overstepped its bounds by focusing on the political paralysis in Washington as much as fiscal policy in determining the new rating. “The debacle over the debt ceiling continued until almost the midnight hour,” said John B. Chambers, chairman of S.& P.’s sovereign ratings committee.
Another S.& P. official, David Beers, added that “fiscal policy, like other government policy, is fundamentally a political process.”
Administration officials at the White House and Treasury angrily criticized S.& P.’s action as based on faulty budget accounting that discounted the just-enacted deal for increasing the debt limit.
The agreement set spending caps in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 and calls for a bipartisan Congressional “super committee” to propose more deficit reduction — for up to $2.5 trillion in combined savings over a decade.
“The bipartisan compromise on deficit reduction was an important step in the right direction,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a statement on Saturday. “Yet, the path to getting there took too long and was at times too divisive. We must do better to make clear our nation’s will, capacity and commitment to work together to tackle our major fiscal and economic challenges.”
The ratings agency put additional pressure on the joint Congressional committee to find additional spending cuts, tax hikes or both to bring down the inexorably rising national debt.
Still, the posturing on Capitol Hill continued.
“Unfortunately, decades of reckless spending cannot be reversed immediately, especially when the Democrats who run Washington remain unwilling to make the tough choices required to put America on solid ground,” Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement.
Full story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44047844/ns/business-us_business/
Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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