The Tea Party Recession

Many of the freshmen House members, the Tea Partiers, have little understanding of the impacts of their intransigence and brinksmanship.

They were elected with generous funding from the likes of Koch and others.

The loss of confidence in the dollar as reserve currency will have unintended consequences yet to be felt. Rest assured, we're all going to feel this one.

Michael Moore circulated a letter that's worth reading:
30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died


It's baffling when voters support policies that are against their own best interests and refuse to educate themselves about the complex global economics involved.

A friend sent this recently and it seems to explain it all:

If only people would realize that history is important
and so is an education that teaches "how to think" .
What we have in today's schools is rote ...memory
to pass the MCAS and nothing else. We were taught
to think and reason, not so today. AND, the politicians
like it that way. Once religion was considered the
opiate of the masses. Today it is ignorance.
Take away a belief system and spoon feed the
populace and you have lemmings.


Worth listening to:
Inside The Tea Party's Rising Influence

Standard & Poor's Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating

US loses AAA credit rating after S&P downgrade
Washington has been locked in months of partisan bickering over the debt ceiling

One of the top credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the United States' top-notch AAA rating for the first time ever.

S&P cut the long-term US rating by one notch to AA+ with a negative outlook, citing concerns about budget deficits.

The agency said the deficit reduction plan passed by the US Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough.

Washington was locked in months of acrimonious partisan bickering over a bill to raise the US debt ceiling.

A US treasury department spokesman said of the S&P analysis: "A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion [£1.2 trillion] error speaks for itself." He did not offer any immediate explanation.

Earlier, as rumours swirled about the downgrade, officials in Washington were telling US media that S&P's sums were deeply flawed.

The unnamed sources were quoted as saying that a treasury official had spotted a $2tn mistake in the agency's report.

The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened”

Standard & Poor's
'Brinksmanship'

Correspondents say a downgrade could further erode global investors' confidence in the world's largest economy, which is already struggling with huge debts, unemployment of 9.1%, and beset by fears of a possible double-dip recession.

S&P said in its report issued late on Friday: "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 stabilise the government's medium-term debt dynamics.

"More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges."

The agency said it might lower the US long-term rating another notch to AA within the next two years if its deficit reduction measures were deemed inadequate.

S&P noted that the bill passed by Congress this week did not include new revenues - Republicans had staunchly opposed President Barack Obama's calls for tax rises to help pay off America's deficit.

The credit agency also noted that the legislation contained only minor policy changes to Medicare, an entitlement programme dear to Democrats.

"The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed," it added.

S&P said the Republicans and Democrats had only been able to agree "relatively modest savings", which fell "well short" of what had been envisaged.