credit rating

Articles

What the U.S. Credit Rating Actually Means—And How to Fix It

Our fractured process and the inability of the two parties to compromise inspired the S&P to throw up its hands.

After an afternoon of contentious wrangling over the numbers, Standard & Poor's, the global bond rating agency, declared Friday for the first time since 1917—when the company issued its very first rating—that U.S. government debt is no longer the good-as-cash investment it has always been. The agency knocked the rating down a notch from AAA to AA+. This is bad news, but specific repercussions will be hard to pin down until the markets open Monday morning. (The two other major ratings agencies still say that U.S. debt is AAA. )

Keep ReadingShow less