[Roy]

Partisan Democrat: I agree with your criticism of the Republicans.

But I do not think you understand that money cannot be borrowed infinitely. That the US government is spending far more than they take in. That can't continue and despite liberal fantasies to the contrary, some people are going to be hurt.

The US should have been downgraded years ago. We can never pay back what we've borrowed and we've been betrayed by BOTH parties who have continually endorsed our insane spending -- seemingly only disagreeing on which pet project got the borrowed money. I

t really started with Reagan and it hasn't stopped since regardless of which wing of the corporatist kleptocracy has controlled the White House and Congress.

Fiscal sanity does not exist in DC.

[sparky]

.
this from S&P global credit portal announcement

"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."

Outch ! that one hurt ,the Tea party were painted as lurid fanatics ..

and as a cherry on top !!

"The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case."

For reference most European countries are rated AAA
counties rated AA are Spain , Slovenia and Belgium

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Roy', 'W')e can never pay back what we've borrowed

[Bill Hicks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'S')&P will not be changing this rating back to AAA. Does anyone seriously think we will have less debt a year from now?

We are getting to see the downfall of a superpower at a very accelerated rate. Unless you are in your upper 70's you will get to see it all pretty much unwind. Aren't we lucky to be here to see it?

[Bill Hicks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('drgoodword', 'T')he libertarians probably stand to lose the most here...poverty tends to value security of food and shelter above political freedoms.

[eXpat]

And here comes the (first) ugly news
China to US the good old days of borrowing are over
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') China bluntly criticized the United States on Saturday one day after the superpower’s credit rating was downgraded, saying the “good old days” of borrowing were over.

Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. long-term credit rating from top-tier AAA by a notch to AA-plus on Friday over concerns about the nation’s budget deficits and climbing debt burden.

China — the United States’ biggest creditor — said Washington only had itself to blame for its plight and called for a new stable global reserve currency.

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

After a week which saw $2.5 trillion wiped off global markets, the move deepened investors’ concerns of an impending recession in the United States and over the euro zone crisis.

Finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations will confer by telephone later on Saturday or on Sunday, a senior European diplomatic source said.

[prajeshbhat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')It is only nice to see when a tax man is coming to tax a pile of worthless shit.
Bye bye big government.
Bye bye welfare.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eXpat', 'X')inhua called for the printing of US dollars to be supervised internationally and repeated China’s contention that a new global reserve currency might be needed.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]PIMCO: "U.S. Downgrade Heralds A New Financial Era"

It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S&P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery.

(snip)

More worryingly, there will now be genuine uncertainties as to wider systemic impact of this change. With America occupying the core of the world’s financial system, Friday’s downgrade will erode over time the standing of the global public goods it supplies - from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency to its financial markets as the best place for other countries to outsource their hard-earned savings. This will weaken the effectiveness of the US as the global anchor, accelerating the unsteady migration to a multi polar system while increasing the risk of economic fragmentation.

(snip)

For the sake of their country and the wider global economy, both parties should resist the urge to begin bickering. Instead they should seize this potential “Sputnik Moment” — a visible shock to the national psyche that can unify Americans around a common vision and a renewed sense of purpose — that of halting gradual secular decline by putting the country back on the path of high growth, job creation and financial soundness.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/pimco-us-downgrade-heralds-new-financial-era

[Pops]

I'm not sure there is going to be growth like we've known for a long time, if ever Six.

Right now there is a huge overhang of housing and commercial space and a huge number of mortgages underwater, not to mention losses in savings and retirement funds. Add in inflation of energy, food & rent along with poor income gains and where is the driver of growth?

Oh, yeah and we're laying off teachers and other gov workers right and left and cutting their pay because they're moochers and there are a whole bunch of Army and Marine moochers mustering out right about now as well. For some reason I don't see a post war boom this time around.

Short term I hope we can just make a soft landing with the current downturn.

[The Practician]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Where will new growth come from? The whole developed world has stalled for years now, it's on the decline, even China seems to be sputtering. Developing countries are still growing cuz there's only one way to go when you're at the bottom.. but the developed world just looks like toast with no way out. (other than low population first world states like Australia, they are growing)

[eXpat]

British Minister joins the chorus
Cable says new reserve currency "sensible"
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '(')Reuters) - Business minister Vince Cable on Saturday backed China's call for a new stable global reserve currency in light of the United States losing its AAA long-term credit rating from Standard & Poor's, but said for the moment the U.S. dollar still remained key.

China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, has called for the creation of a secured global reserve currency amid concern over Washington's rising debt burden. On Saturday it roundly condemned the United States, after S&P's rating downgrade, for its "debt addiction.

"The Chinese have been arguing for a long time that the world monetary system needed reforming and that we need a strong reserve currency, by which I think basically they mean the special drawing rights of the IMF," Cable told BBC TV.

"This argument's been around a long time and it would be a sensible way for the world to move but it's not something we're going to do overnight."

Cable has been a vocal critic of the U.S. Congress's protracted arguments to agree a deficit-cutting deal and had warned that Washington's triple-A sovereign debt rating was at risk.

[EnergyUnlimited]

New global currency...
It will either be gold or other mineral based currency or a final round of a paper scam followed by collapse to new Stone Age.

[Cid_Yama]

China can afford to write off their US debt as a loss if it comes to that. China has been resistant to the Yuan being fully convertible because they did not want their currency vunerable to the dollar reserve based currency system.

Asian markets have been moving towards making the Yuan their reserve currency.

What I see is China assisting neighboring Asian markets to join China in a seperate economic sphere of influence where the Yuan is the reserve currency with the Yuan remaining insular from the dollar markets.

This will result in the same situation that existed during the cold war with the Soviet Union.

China and her satellite Asian markets will go isolationist, as the western world collapses.

[Cid_Yama]

One other thing. The dollar being the reserve currency has been the only thing that has allowed us to consume 25% of the world's resources while being only 5% of it's population. That also is now at an end.

Thank you, Republicans. Hope your dreams can survive on only one fifth of what you're used to.

You've totally fraked us with your nonsense, now we are on the fast track to the third world.

You might as well tear down the border with Mexico, because we are coming down to join them.

Friggin' stupid stupid people.

Want to know what your children's future is? They haven't got one any longer.

Might as well get your child signed up right now with Christian Children's Fund so some Asian family can support them for only 5 Yuan a day.

Or would that be Buddhist Children's Fund now?

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'C')hina can afford to write off their US debt as a loss if it comes to that. China has been resistant to the Yuan being fully convertible because they did not want their currency vunerable to the dollar reserve based currency system.

Asian markets have been moving towards making the Yuan their reserve currency.

What I see is China assisting neighboring Asian markets to join China in a seperate economic sphere of influence where the Yuan is the reserve currency with the Yuan remaining insular from the dollar markets.

This will result in the same situation that existed during the cold war with the Soviet Union.

China and her satellite Asian markets will go isolationist, as the western world collapses.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'O')ne other thing. The dollar being the reserve currency has been the only thing that has allowed us to consume 25% of the world's resources while being only 5% of it's population. That also is now at an end.

Thank you, Republicans. Hope your dreams can survive on only one fifth of what you're used to.

[Cid_Yama]

Excuse me, how does my comment about tearing down the border wall, to the Republicans that are all concerned about it, show me as a rascist?

We are coming down to their economic level.

They can start building their maquiladoras on this side of the border now.



The world is coming to an end within the next decade or so due to massive quantities of methane being released from the ESAS.

But our remaining time could have been spent as a first world nation, instead of a failed state.

Damned Morons.

[Sys1]

Cid_Yama : Why blaming republicans on that? We all knew the system would crash, because based on growth. Peak oil and Olduvai theories shifting from paper to reality. This is it.
Moreover, since I often read your ultra doomers interventions on environment threads, you seem so much concerned by exponential global warming that the state of economy should look trivial from your standpoint and would not worth a post.

We are living historic time and arguing about how republicans are bad is useless. We as a whole are bad. We embraced this way of living and still loving it. We as peakoilers can get satisfied to see the system collapsing before our eyes just to appreciate how smart we were to predict the coming mess. But then, I'm sure we can do better -and anyway have better to do- than blaming a specific group of humans beeings.

[Cid_Yama]

We knew how precarious our situation was. Heck, it was a miracle that President Obama was able to pull us back from the brink when he first entered office. The world economy at the time had totally seized up. Ships were sitting Idle or being scrapped.

But, the Republican's saw it as their mission sabotage his Presidency no matter the cost.

Well the cost was too damn high!

They didn't just take down the currrent Administration, they took us all down.

Permanently. There is no recovering from this, EVER.