S&P Seen Surrendering to Tea Party Costing U.S. Taxpayer

[titaniumsalute]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-08/s-p-seen-surrendering-to-tea-party-at-expense-of-u-s-taxpayer.html

Standard & Poor’s, the rating company that downgraded the debt of the United States to AA+ from AAA for the first time, now finds itself assailed by investors led by billionaire Warren Buffett for making a political decision that has more to do with Tea Party politics than the financial stability of the U.S.

In 2009, when S&P reaffirmed the U.S.’s AAA rating, analysts led by Nikola Swann wrote that the ratio would approach 90 percent by 2013.

“The old fashioned ratings agencies where humans make the decision to downgrade are always wrong,” Christopher Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

S&P, Moody’s and Fitch came under scrutiny for ratings of financial products linked to subprime mortgages after losses and writedowns by the world’s biggest financial institutions reached $2.1 trillion.

[izquierdista]

1. Tea Party politics IS financial stability

An inverse relation to be sure, as the rise of the former signals the ruin of the latter.

[Proud Public Servant]

2. I just had this brief fantasy

In which Warren Buffett used his considerable wealth, Koch brothers-style, to destroy the Tea Party.