EconomicCrisis.US

The credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States government’s credit worthiness last week to much consternation. But they were right to do so, if for the wrong reasons. In the face of complete intransigence on the part of Republicans, can Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats do anything about it? Would they even if they could?

Have you heard the news? It was in all the papers. On every news website and every TV news program from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. The credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s, the best known of all of the rating agencies, took the bold and curious step of downgrading the credit rating of the United States Government from the platinum plated AAA down to AA+ last Friday. It’s the first time in this nation’s history that anyone anywhere has ever considered the creditworthiness of the United States anything less than iron clad.
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It might be time for another midnight ride by Paul Revere, this time warning “the creditors are coming.”

Americans seem not to have awakened to the fast-looming debt crisis that could summon a new recession, imperil their stock market investments and shatter faith in the world’s most powerful economy. Those are among the implications, both sudden and long-lasting, expected to unfold if the U.S. defaults on debt payments for the first time in history.

Facing an August deadline for raising the country’s borrowing limit or setting loose the consequences, politicians and economists are plenty alarmed. The people? Apparently not so much.
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It finally happened. Last week, one of the big bond rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s, put a “negative” watch on U.S. government debt. This is the first time the good old US of A isn’t AAA-rated with a “stable” outlook.

How long can we spend $1.40 for every $1 we bring in? According to S&P, the chickens will come home to roost as early as 2013 if Washington doesn’t start getting our nation’s finances in order.

The credit watchdogs are rightfully worried the right and the left won’t come to an agreement to reduce deficits until it’s too late, resulting in a possible downgrade of our actual bond rating, from AAA to AA, and not just a downgrade in the “outlook.”
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Long-term trends in the labor market have been particularly brutal for men, but our Washington policymakers appear to be either unaware of such trends or to have ignored them for the most part. Over the past decade, the total number of jobs for women went up by close to a million. Meanwhile, men lost more than 3 million jobs. From 1960 to 2008, the average unemployment rate for men 25 years and older was 4.2 percent. In the last two years, it has more than doubled, shooting up to 8.9 percent. By contrast, unemployment for women of the same age and for the same period of time went from 4.7 percent to 7.2 percent, an increase of 52 percent. The disparity is more striking if one considers that women’s rate of participation in the workforce has risen sharply since 1960 while the percentage of men in the job market has been shrinking.
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