Embarrassed Again -- Investigating Standard and Poors

Though I didn't like the affect it had on my retirement portfolio, I applaud Standard and Poors for having the courage to downgrade the US Government debt. The US Government is disfunctional at the moment. Congress didn't have the will to make the cuts needed to avoid exceeding the debt limit, and the Republicans with their commitment to never raise any taxes even if that means removing unfair loop holes preventing some from paying their fair share nearly took us to the brink of... well probably only a Government shut down.

I give President Obama the credit for preventing the worse case scenario, a sure thing had he left congress to do the job on their own. But either way, the behavior of congress was irresponsible. They even went on vacation without finishing the work on the FAA budget causing millions of dollars of revenue from being collected, making our debt situation worse, grant perhaps insignificant given the total deficit. And, people wonder why Standard and Poors downgraded the US. The question is why didn't the other rating agencies follow suit. I guess they didn't learn from the mortgage securities they rated AAA before they went bust pushing us into the recession in the first place.

To make it worse, now the Government is investigating Standard and Poors. And, the City of Los Angeles fired Standard and Poors after downgrading its debt. And, people have the gall to complain that the rating agencies have a tendency to rate high in order to maximize their own profit.

President Obama has only disappointed me a few times during his presidency. This is one of them. The second was when he decided to promote oil drilling on the East Coast, which of course was followed shortly by the huge oil spill.

Taking retaliatory action against rating agencies for downgrading debt is only going to prevent them from rating securities higher when they should be lower. It's bad policy for the US and it's bad policy for the City of LA.

Magobrillo