US Receives Debt Warning from Standard & Poors: The Debt Crisis Begins Sooner Than Expected

Conservatives have been warning everyone who will listen that the orgy of spending that started under G. W. Bush and accelerated under Barack Obama cannot go on forever and that the piper will eventually need to be paid. Rep. Paul Ryan actually has a plan to deal with the crisis. But all Obama wants to talk about is taxing the "rich" and death panels. He must be the most inept and unserious president in the history of the Republic.

A few hours ago a bombshell fell on the playground of New Deal-Great Society Democrats and the fanatical partisans of tax and spend liberalism. Standard & Poors issued a debt warning to the US. Reuters reports:

Standard & Poor's threatened to downgrade the United States' prized AAA credit rating on Monday unless the Obama administration and Congress find a way to slash the yawning federal budget deficit within two years.

S&P, which assigns ratings to guide investors on the risks involved in buying debt instruments, said the move signals at least a one-in-three chance that it could eventually cut its long-term AAA rating on the United States within two years.

A downgrade, which would leave Germany and France with a higher rating, would erode the status of the United States as the world's most powerful economy and the dollar's role as the dominant global currency.

Read the rest here. If Obama merely seeks to spin this as an excuse to raise taxes and does not take seriously the absolute need to cut spending, the US is in big trouble and that means the rest of us are in big trouble too.

So it begins . . .