Standard & Poor, the credit rating agency remove the United States government
from its list of risk-free borrowers.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Standard & Poor, the credit rating agency removed the United States government from its list of risk-free borrowers on Friday night, despite there being not a hope in hell of the US government welshing on its debts. Without a doubt the current crises was manufactured by the Republican right, acting on behalf of the markets, trans-nationals and those who benefit financially most from them.
Surely it is high time S@P, and the other two rating agencies were brought down, in another age the directors of these company's would have been charged with treason. Prior to the crash of 2008, not one of these agencies down graded the banks who were about to crash the US and European economies. And now, at a time when the world economy is on a precipice, these jerks come out with this. One wonders if their real intention is to tip it off the edge, as one cannot but notice the markets are calling for more government austerity and tax cuts for the wealthy. They have concluded the only way they can maintain their wealth and power, is to ring fence the wealthy, pauperise the masses, and they do not care how they achieve this.
It is the same in the UK, not content with creating a double dip recession, Tory Chancellor George Osborne is talking up a tax cut for those earning more than 100K. So far that has been Osborne's only public intervention in this weeks 'crises.' In reality what this would mean is those who have suffered the least from the Tory led Coalition governments austerity cuts, and had the most responsibility for the crash, are now to be rewarded with a large tax cut.
This is to much coming from a governments whose members go round the country telling any fool who is daft enough to listen, "We are all in this together," especially when its leader David Cameron, can afford to rent a holiday villa at 12K a week whilst the majority of Brits can not afford a holiday this year due to the government austerity measures.
To understand just how ridiculous these credit rating companies are, the United States has maintained the highest credit rating for decades. S.&P. first designated it AAA in 1941 at the beginning of WW2. Yet there was not a whimper from the ratings agencies about government debt, etc, for they new Roosevelt and his immediate sucsessors would have had their heads on a pike and the public at large would have cried treason. Sadly today's useless and pliable politicos are made of lesser stuff.
At a time of a great economic crises, often of the markets own making, as we found to our cost, the market does not know best as it is motivated by personal greed and self interest. Only when the politicians accept this fact will they be able to begin to solve the worlds economic problems. The markets have spent the last month rattling their sabers at government, and with S@P ratings cut they have fired a shot into the White House. It is high time the US and EU governments fired back and gave the financial markets a slap, by introducing an extended version of the Tobin tax and called in the directors of the ratings agencies and demanded a change in their licences.
It is time the people, through its government ruled the markets, and not as happens today, the markets rule the government at the peoples expense.
* Url:http://www.organizedrage.com/2011/08/standard-poor-credit-rating-agency.html
