the us credit rating

tonight, after a fun night out and about, nathan and i jumped on the couch (after fixing the internet), grabbed our ipad and macbook, and each immediately pulled up our favorite news sites (its kind of a habit we have, always checking and staying in the know). quickly, i stumbled upon an article that caught my eye because of the link- on the drudge report, it simply said "downgraded." whoa- what?! while nathan and i had been enjoying our five guys & zesto, apparently the guys over at the s&p  were busy. i clicked the link and then told nathan to look- could it really be that what we had been hearing about for weeks, even months, now had finally happened? could our great country really no longer be among the most highest rated in the world?

while i don't want to get to much into my political beliefs here, i do want to say that i believe this has the potential to be very good for our country. while it will mean some pain in some areas, i think this is the kick in the pants we've needed. we all know that our economy is in shambles, our politicians are playing some sort of sick version of "monopoly" with play money in the trillions, and things have to change. nathan and i can't spend more than we make. i mean, i guess we could, but not for long. so why on earth can our government spend way more than they bring in? and as much as we would like to just "adjust" our income to match our spending (and we could do that, to an extent) we can't just charge our employer more because we can't live within our means. and i don't believe that the government should be able to regularly do that. i am glad that the s&p down grounded our credit rating, because it shows that someone agrees with me, and hopefully, things will change.

if you haven't read it yet, take a look at the report here. one of the things they say is, "More broadly, 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. "

wow!  i hope and pray that the leaders of our great nation will recognize that their actions and their partisanship are what are hurting america.  may we take this action by the s&p as a warning as what is to come- and make decisions accordingly.