Obama officials attack S&P's credibility after downgrade

reuters ^ | 8/5/2011 | Glenn Somerville and Rachelle Younglai

[tobyhill]

The Obama administration attacked the credibility of the analysis underlying Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade the United States' top credit rating on Friday, saying it had found a $2 trillion error.

S&P was forced to remove the number from its analysis after Treasury officials discovered that the rating agency's estimates of the government's discretionary spending was $2 trillion too high, sources familiar with the discussions said.

[freedumb2003]

With a $14 Trillion deficit and a $200+ Trillion funding deficit in SS, SSI and Medicare, $2 Trillion is a rounding error.

[stephenjohnbanker]

LOL....he’s done : )

[FlingWingFlyer]

S&P is about to find out that you don’t screw with der Fuhrer and his Chicago Gestapo. They are about to be skewered by Barry’s toadies in his state run “media”.

[Migraine]

brocko should not whine about this.

Any community organizer worth a damn would already have rented a mob to go to S&P headquarters and demonstrate every day until they said “shazzam!”.

[Slings and Arrows]

Time to restore my standard tagline.

[tobyhill]

They even took the questionable $2 trillion out of the equation and they still found reason enough to downgrade.

[kearnyirish2]

They probably said the same thing in Kenya when the whites left...and the trains haven’t moved since.

Reality has set in; it doesn’t matter what “they” say.

[Safrguns]

Wasn’t S&P’s offices raided by the fed prior to this downgrade???

Seems like I saw a story on this yesterday.

Maybe Obama expected... errr... WANTED the downgrade to be lower than AA+.

Maybe this is his way of getting what he really wanted.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Yep....you and I knew this would happen.

[Jim Robinson]

Obama is an idiot.

[NoLibZone]

WH says its S & P’s fault not the Tea Partys or GOPS.

[Jim Robinson]

Obama will send in a few union thugs to bust some knee caps. Problem solved. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

[kearnyirish2]

Apparently when the international bankers funded his election, they were OK; now when nature reacts, they’re not.

God bless General Franco.

[Trueblackman]

Maybe the people who run S&P are simply racist will be the talking point by Sunday.

[tobyhill]

They did Obama a favor and waited till the markets closed of a Friday evening.
I'm really tired of the MSM claiming this isn't a partisan issue but it really is. The Rats want to tax more so they can spend more and Conservatives want to cut spending and live within our means.

[Williams]

This is what democrats do. That evil S&P.

[zbogwan2]

Maybe the S&P’s execs were teed off because they weren’t invited to the Obama hip hop BBQ thing?

[tobyhill]

The downgrade would have never happened if they passed the Balanced Budget Amendment. We have been running without even a fiscal budget for going on 3 years now.

[Steel Wolf]

Not to pick nits here, but any '2 trillion dollar error' the Obama administration found was made from fiscal projections spun completely of unicorn flavored sunshine.

That sort of thing might make good copy, but it's not going to convince investors who want to see real numbers. Our debt to income ration is preposterous. You can't blame anyone for downgrading our credit-worthiness, nor can you expect the Administration to have any credibility by asserting we have 2 trillion dollars in the penumbra or in the seat cushions of the couch.