Here's where some of my confusion comes from:
1. S & P downgraded the US credit rating. On the one hand - this is a big deal and is the first time its happened in our history. But we know that this is the same company that blew their ratings of mortgage-backed securities in the lead-up to the Great Recession. Should we trust them now?
Not only that, they made an error worth $2 trillion in their initial report and Ezra Klein says their deficit math had to be discarded completely.
The original draft of their report — which was leaked to Politico — included a section in the executive summary laying out the deficit math for the next decade. When that math proved wrong, S&P simply deleted the section. But that’s inconsistent with what they left in the report. Either the numbers matter or they don’t.
2. Its clear that if the S&P math is bogus, then what they're left with is critiquing the political intransigence that led to this mess as the problem. And as Steve Benen points out, Eric Cantor is hell-bent on proving them right while the President continues to call for compromise. And yet our major media can't seem to tell the difference and promotes the false equivalency meme.
3. The whole S&P downgrade was aimed at whether or not US treasuries were safe investments. In the aftermath - we see that government treasuries are hot and its the private stock market has crashed. What's up with that?
But nevermind the inconsistencies here. We have a narrative to promote. To summarize it: "All of Washington sucks and they're ruining our country."
Anyone want to join me in saying that doesn't add up?
(Oops, I guess I forgot. The blogosphere is not for questions. We're always supposed to be sure we're right and have all the answers - if only those motherf*ckers in Washington would listen to us. LOL)
The stock market panics at the drop of a hat. It's always very volatile and its movements are usually meaningless, for all that the media treat every uptick or downtick as a big story.
ReplyDeleteWith money fleeing the stock market (at the moment, anyway), it's natural that it's flowing into Treasuries. (What else are people going to invest in -- the eurozone?) Sensible people know, as Obama pointed out the other day, that the US is still the US regardless of what some crew of blunderers like S&P thinks.
As for the MSM, they've long chickened out of taking a stand on anything, even if it's clear truth against clear lies. It's no wonder they're all losing audience share.
This might sound corny, but yesterday I couldn't help thinking about a wonderful saying from a friend years ago.
ReplyDelete"The great thing about getting older is that you start to see the patterns."
"1. S & P downgraded the US credit rating. On the one hand - this is a big deal and is the first time its happened in our history."
ReplyDeleteExcuse me "our history" - I am an alien, but I assume you refer the history of the United States of America.
Now we can differ about when, exactly, the history of the US of A started, but it sure was *way* before S&P started *its* operations (which was around 1860).
So a better way to express this would be: "For the first time in S&P's history, the firm lowered *its* rating of the US credibility.
[ And to make things perfectly clear - on the first
day of trading, the markets showed that they still
loved Treasure Bonds, negating the shrill downgrade ]