U.S. credit rating downgraded

People like to be in the public eye. It makes them feel important.

They like to be a part of history.

Well, congratulations, Congress.

You made history. You will be remembered as the first legislators in United States history to allow the country's credit rating to be downgraded.

Standard & Poor, the agency that lowered the rating, cited the current political atmosphere in Washington, D.C. as a reason, issuing a statement saying the rating was because "of the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties" over a credible deficit reduction plan.

So, thank you, Speaker of the House John Boehner, for your loyalty to your party rather than your country. In an attempt to sway voters away from the present administration in 2012, Boehner, his fellow Republicans and the renegade Tea Party members stonewalled a measure to hike the debt ceiling. They dragged their feet in writing the bill, picking away at philosophical issues rather than real world urgencies.
They stood in the way of real economic implementation -- raising taxes on the rich, cutting the waste of an overblown defense budget, and refusing to reinvest dollars in the U.S. economy that would rejuvenate the job market and put people back to work.

Because of their economic ignorance, their refusal to give the working men and women of the United States a fair shake, the folks who work for a living are losing their jobs, their homes, their savings. Now, maybe because the fat cats are about to take it in the shorts, you'll do something. Then again, maybe not.

And, thank you, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for having no backbone, for compromising on a debt bill that you said "protects the full faith and credit of the United States," that, as you said, resulted in the U.S. getting "a bipartisan compromise that averts an economic catastrophe."

What we have now is a catastrophe, a trainwreck of major proportions.

What can we look forward to?

We'll have to wait until the markets open on Monday to figure that out.

I imagine it won't be good news, not when a failing credit line -- with the warning it will drop even more within the next two years -- comes into play. And, especially when it will lead to more unemployment, more people being upside-down in their homes, more people wiping out their savings to simply exist.

We're talking more of a tidal wave than a ripple effect here. Lose your job and you lose your health benefits, that is if you had them to begin with.

Unemployed?

Well, we've seen how sympathetic the Republicans are to that, fighting vehemently against extension of unemployment benefits three times in the last year until the last minute when they stood down, but only when the Democrats threw some pork on the table so the greedy little piggies, as the George Harrison song goes, could clutch their forks and knives to eat their bacon.

A few of the more politically apt Republicans voted against the debt ceiling plan, knowing full well that there were not sufficient spending cuts attached to it. That way, when it all went to hell in a hand basket, they could look blameless. The fact is, however, effective spending cuts could have been made. Ending the nonsense in Afghanistan, repealing the Bush tax cuts, allowing the president to have a line-item veto to get rid of special-interest spending would have gone a long way. Instead, however, they wanted to eliminate social programs, laying slime by calling them "entitlements," a word that has become a pejorative instead of reflection of how we are supposed to take care of each other in this society.

They eschew those programs as socialism and stand tall for capitalism, which has landed this ship on the rocks. You see, "the man," that repugnant clan of the uber-wealthy that really runs this country, has stood so tall for so long that corporate America has bled to death. These guys stuffed their wallets while you and I went years without pay raises, had to endure outrageous hikes in our share of our health benefits and suffered furloughs and layoffs, just so the profit margin remained high enough to satisfy the investors.

The beast has been bled now, leaving a rotting carcass on a road that was paved with good intentions. You and I? We're hitchhikers on that road, not knowing how far we'll get.

Meanwhile, those investors will now turn from the market to gobbling up American debt. Even though the country's rating was downgraded, it is still a rather small gamble. And, with the downgrade comes the opportunity to jack up interest on that debt and profit even more, so it will not be a surprise to see many heavy hitters sell off their portfolios and real estate holdings to get a piece of the action.

That, you see, is where the trouble will begin because the selloff will tumble stocks, at least for awhile, which will result in layoffs, closures, more time between employee raises, a hacking of benefits and more havoc dropped on the working class that, by the way, will also suffer because their 401(k) plans are usually tied to their employer's stock.
Like we said during the Bush years, if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

I think I need a drink.

Maybe two.