So, Who does S & P Blame?

Blame is much less important than solution, one presumes.

(Lake Tahoe Real Estate Blog / August 8, 2011 / Richard Bolen)

Yup, some of you may be pleased, this is our last post about things political for a while. This comes from CNN, and it's about the S & P downgrade, of course.

The article is entitled: "Questions abound after agency downgrades U.S. credit rating", and it's here in full.

Of particular interest to us were comments made by John Chambers, head of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor. When asked about factors that led to the S&P downgrade decision, or who's fault it is, he made, without citing political party or politician, the following statements.

Before that though, we do have our interpretation of what Chambers says here, and we're rather confident others might see the exact same differently. Our opinion therefore really doesn't matter much here, whatever it might be; the point is what do you think?

John Chambers' comments are:

• "Political brinkmanship over the debt ceiling proved to be a key issue, with the U.S. government getting to the last day before they had cash-management problems."

• "Few governments separate the budget process from the debt-authorization process as the United States does."

• "Though the budget deal that finally was reached will deliver at least $2.1 trillion in savings over the next decade, that will not suffice."

• "This is a problem that's been a long time in the making — well over this administration, the prior administration."

• "Congress should shoulder some of the blame."

• "The first thing Congress could have done is to have raised the debt ceiling in a timely manner so that much of this debate had been avoided to begin with, as it had done 60 or 70 times since 1960 without that much debate."

• "The decision by Congress about whether to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is one crucial area. That could produce another $950 billion toward debt reduction."

Our other recent posts on the debt ceiling nonsense, jobs and our economy:

Aug 7, 2011: The Top Ten Job Killing Companies Right Now
Aug 6, 2011: Water, Mars and a good place for THEM.
Aug 5, 2011: Job Growth? Who Knew?
Jul 28, 2011: A Better Jobs Report… amid this Political Nonsense!
May 8, 2011:  A Good Jobs Report
Mar 4, 2011: Jobs Report: Good News for all of Us, and South Lake Tahoe too.
Mar 3, 2011: Caution: positive South Lake Tahoe housing news found here
Feb 10, 2011: More Better Economic News for South Lake Tahoe