U.S. Fiscal Crisis Worsens: Standard & Poor’s Changes Outlook on American Sovereign Debt to “Negative”
It is the rating agency statement heard across the world, like the first cannon ball fired at Fort Sumter. One of the three iconic ratings agencies, Standard & Poor’s, sent panic waves through global financial market when it issued a statement on the U.S. fiscal situation, changing its previous outlook on the U.S. government’s finances from “stable” to “negative.” However one interprets the latest statement from Standard & Poor’s ( and many Washington cheerleaders claim that the statement is meaningless and America will never default on its debts), the reality is quite clear: not even the “late to the party” rating agencies that previously classified subprime mortgage-backed securities as AAA grade investments can ignore any longer the catastrophic fiscal trajectory of the United States.
In its statement, S&P indicates that if the fiscal crisis in the U.S. remain unresolved, within two years U.S. Treasuries will be downgraded. The statement acknowledges that the American political system is totally dysfunctional, and appears unable to craft a viable plan to restore fiscal sanity to America’s out of control federal government budget. Reading between the lines, and adding my own perspective ( see my report “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015: Recession Into Depression”) it seems increasingly obvious that save for a miracle, the United States is headed for a fiscal train wreck of calamitous proportion, probably sooner rather than later.