![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
BBC MUNDO RADIO
The ratings agency Standard & Poor's has reduced the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA+, the company announced late Friday.
"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," Standard & Poor's said in a statement announcing the move.
"More broadly," the agency added, "the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
"Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any time soon," S&P added.
The federal government had been expecting and preparing for Standard & Poor's to downgrade the rating of U.S. debt, government officials told ABC News before the reduction was formally announced.
However, another government official said S&P's analysis was "based on flawed math and assumptions" to the tune of roughly $2 trillion, so the Obama administration pushed back. But even though "S&P has acknowledged its numbers are wrong," the official said before the reduction.
S&P refused to comment at the time on the alleged numerical error.
Last month, Standard & Poor's warned that the U.S. risked a downgrade to AA status if Congress did not lift the debt ceiling and reduce the total debt by $4 trillion over the next decade. It later toned down its warning.
S&P is the last of the major ratings agencies to comment about U.S. credit rating after the Senate passed an agreement Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default on U.S. debt, following passage in the House on Monday evening.
After the bill passed in the Senate, Moody's Investor Service affirmed its AAA rating on U.S. sovereign debt but lowered its outlook to "negative."
At stake in all this is not only interest rates the U.S. must pay on its $14.4 trillion debt, but a host of rates for consumers ranging from those on items from mortgages to car loans to credit cards.
A downgrade of U.S. debt likely will cause interest rates of all kinds to edge up and that would cost the U.S. and consumers billions of dollars.
The uncertainty surrounding the U.S.' now-perfect AAA rating has also thrust the three major ratings agencies into the spotlight, raising questions about the significance and boundaries of their credit assessments.
"The initial increase of the debt limit by $900 billion and the commitment to raise it by a further $1.2-1.5 trillion by year end have virtually eliminated the risk of such a default, prompting the confirmation of the rating at AAA," Moody's said in its report on Tuesday.
Moody's assigned a negative outlook, explaining it could downgrade the U.S. on four conditions. Those factors included if fiscal discipline weakens in the coming year, further "fiscal consolidation" does not take place in 2013, the economic outlook "deteriorates significantly," or there is an appreciable rise in the government's spending "over and above what is currently expected."
Earlier on Tuesday, Fitch Ratings also affirmed its AAA rating for U.S. debt over the short-term, but warned of more tough choices coming soon.
"While the agreement is clearly a step in the right direction, the United States, as in much of Europe, must also confront tough choices on tax and spending against a weak economic back drop if the budget deficit and government debt is to be cut to safer levels over the medium term," Fitch said in a statement.
Concern has arisen over the affects of these possible cuts to Medicare and Medicaid spending and an already fragile economy.
Today, the Labor Department announced that payrolls expanded by 117,000 jobs in July as unemployment fell to 9.1 percent, a bit of good news in what has been a dismal series of economic reports this summer. Though the 117,000 number exceeded expectations, however, it was still considered a weak job-creation figure.
On Wednesday, payroll company ADP reported that the private sector added 114,000 jobs in July, far short of what's needed to get the job market moving again.
On Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported consumer spending fell 0.2 percent in June.
And last Friday, the U.S. government said the economy expanded at a disappointing 1.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter after growing just barely at 0.4 percent during the first quarter.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário