Second-Rate Credit Rating for the US? « Emac's Stock Watch | Fox Business: "December 8, 2009 06:38 PM EST by Elizabeth MacDonald
It should come as no small surprise that the threat of a downgrade to the US’s triple-A rating, which the country has had since World War I, comes at the same time the White House and Congress are allowing TARP mission creep. The President now wants to use unused TARP funds for a new program to create jobs, as high unemployment could cost the Democrats their own jobs in the mid-term elections.
Remember the TARP scare tactics the government used to launch this bank rescue fund in the fall of 2008? When we were told we had nothing to fear but catastrophe itself?
A taxpayer-backed fund launched because the bank regulatory antenna had somehow mysteriously fallen off the roof of the Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve? Launched because regulators didn’t notice that the banks had fricasseed their balance sheets and were careening around in hospital gowns? Is it the government’s deficit spending attitude, like using TARP for a job bank, that is behind the reason why the US’s rating is threatened to begin with?...more
