{"id":1452,"date":"2011-08-06T06:53:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T06:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=1452"},"modified":"2011-08-23T07:05:41","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T07:05:41","slug":"us-downgrade-the-world-is-beginning-to-wake-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/us-downgrade-the-world-is-beginning-to-wake-up\/","title":{"rendered":"US downgrade &#8211; the world is beginning to wake up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So S&amp;P, one of the rating agencies that fuelled the bubble and bust, has downgraded US credit rating.\u00a0 Its about time.\u00a0 Not that the US isn&#8217;t wonderful, but its economic profligacy expanded to new levels in the last decade and the culture is becoming one of gratuitous consumption at the cost of future earnings.<\/p>\n<p>The king&#8217;s new clothes are not his and finally one of the courtiers has drawn attention to the fact.\u00a0 Everyone is dressed in robes they can not afford &#8211; the king&#8217;s new clothes are owned by someone else (China and other lenders to the US) and the king&#8217;s coffers are empty.<\/p>\n<p>Recognising the reality of consumption, debt, productivity and earnings is a step in the right direction.\u00a0 It is a good thing.\u00a0 It is good that the rating agency is doing its job.\u00a0 It&#8217;s good that our delusion is being revealed.\u00a0 It might be uncomfortable, but the sooner it happens the sooner we can fix the problem and change our behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>August is usually a volatile month with low trading volumes so let&#8217;s see what happens in September when bankers get back to &#8220;work&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/servlet\/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&amp;blobcol=urldata&amp;blobtable=MungoBlobs&amp;blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3DUS_Downgraded_AA%2B.pdf&amp;blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&amp;blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&amp;blobkey=id&amp;blobheadername1=content-type&amp;blobwhere=1243942957443&amp;blobheadervalue3=UTF-8\">S&amp;P Report<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BBC <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-14428930\">US loses AAA credit rating after S&amp;P downgrade<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So S&amp;P, one of the rating agencies that fuelled the bubble and bust, has downgraded US credit rating.\u00a0 Its about time.\u00a0 Not that the US isn&#8217;t wonderful, but its economic profligacy expanded to new levels in the last decade and the culture is becoming one of gratuitous consumption at the cost of future earnings. The &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/us-downgrade-the-world-is-beginning-to-wake-up\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">US downgrade &#8211; the world is beginning to wake up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-markets"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-nq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}