ho hum ...

Oh, joy. People jumping out of buildings, and an American Fascist state rising, fuelled by extreme right-wing Christianity.

Brace yourselves, people

There are already some scarily fascist people about. Just look at the readership number for the Daily Fail.

Downgraded by a US company that is in the business of collating data, analysis and forecast.

Where the feck were this same company when it came to predicting financial meltdown?

Why should a highly profitable company be listened to, I mean really?

I'm back and I have random changing opinions as ever.

Washington officials are saying that there is an error in S&P’s calculations.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14428930

That’s a big number to miss if true. Other agencies haven’t downgraded the US economy yet - but I would guess that if another did it would indicate some level of consensus. Right now, S&P seems to be alone in its thinking. This could change over the next few days, or hours depending.

When they were challenged over the ratings of the junk mortgage bonds they said it was opinion and not challengeable in court, Yet people lost money because these ratings were duff. Now they will probably say the same.

The interesting thing was their reasoning. They blamed the squabbling and GOP in particular. They also criticised the lack of tax increases. So the republicans are already blaming Obama even though it was their fault.

I wonder how far away we are from the etch-a-sketch solution to the global economy (i.e. shake it up to reset everything and redo from start).
Obviously it's not going to happen but I wonder if someone with actual influence is going to suggest it (or be forced into suggesting it but some Tea Party type nutter).

Even after downgrade, it is safest place for investors money it seems...

It's the safest place they can actually buy the bonds they need to own from. Nobody else issues as many or has such a busy secondary market, so you gotta buy treasuries like it or not seems to be the message here. The Chinese have been whinging about this for years, no doubt mainly because there is no short or medium term prospect of their equivalents taking centre stage from America's product.

Actually if they had not bailed out the banks then much of the debts that are troubling the financial system would have had to be written off. Many of the banks are insolvent and are only held up because of the trillions that central banks have given them to encourage lending.